


burning in the fire of a thousand smiles

by qqueenofhades



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Modern Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-04-14 07:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4555383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qqueenofhades/pseuds/qqueenofhades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern British Royalty AU. HRH The Princess of Wales, Emma Windsor, rather literally runs into her bodyguard's little brother, shy librarian Killian Jones, at a benefit gala, and sparks unexpectedly fly. But can they make a relationship work in the glare of the spotlight, and with Captain Liam Jones' own dark past? Complete, posted here by request of tumblr!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The cameras at the foot of the grand staircase went off all at once, in a bombard like an exploding star, as HRH The Princess of Wales appeared at the top of it, gowned in a stunning floor-length custom Dior, blonde hair swept into an intricate braided updo and her great-great grandmother's priceless Cartier tiara nestled atop it. She wore a matching diamond necklace and earrings, white evening gloves, Louboutin pumps (every detail of her outfit would be tweeted, criticized, praised, and pored over within the next fifteen minutes, and dominate all coverage of the benefit gala) and just an elegant hint of makeup. This was Emma Charlotte Victoria Elizabeth Windsor's first appearance since becoming the first royal daughter in history to hold the title of Princess of Wales, heiress to the throne, in her own right, and not merely as consort to the heir in waiting, ever since the required assent from the Commonwealth countries made gender-neutral primogeniture the law of the land. Great Britain had watched its princess grow up for sixteen years, in gossip magazines and official publications and carefully released photos, when (surprising themselves as much as anyone) the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had another child – a son. Ordinarily, that meant he would have leapfrogged his older sister in the line of succession, but there was a massive public outcry against the idea of England's sweetheart having to give up her position due to silly old medieval requirements, and the process to change the law started accordingly.

Now, six years later, it had finally ground its way through the Government gauntlet and actually been enacted. Emma would succeed to the crown, as had always been planned and prepared for, and her baby brother, Prince Neal, would function merely in the career of supporting royal. (He called himself that because none of his actual names – Nicholas Edward Arthur Louis – are to a six-year-old boy's taste, hence N.E.A.L. Emma hoped it didn't stick. By a nasty little coincidence, that was the name of the boy who broke her heart, freshman year at St. Andrews. Left her gun-shy about ever dating another commoner, after the scandal splashed out across the red-top tabloids, recording in gleeful detail how Neal Cassidy had taken advantage of his connection to the Princess to rake in cash, favors, exclusive access to luxe Mayfair nightclubs, field-level Premier League tickets, and more. Then when she cut off the gravy train, he dumped her.)

Not even the example of her own parents had thus far questioned Emma's resolve. Queen Mary Margaret (Queen Mary III, officially) had been blessed with a true fairytale in her consort – Prince David was nicknamed "Prince Charming" in the early days of their courtship, for his dashing blonde good looks and devotion to his bride. And he actually _was_ a commoner – not some blue-blooded scion of the gentry prepped his entire life for a royal match, but the son of a solidly middle-class English family – when he and the then-princess met and fell in love. He had served with exceptional faith and loyalty ever since, in the fishbowl of the royal household. Emma wanted to be closer to her mum, to really talk to her about what it would mean, this strange business of being a queen, but she was still deeply a daddy's girl at heart. Whenever something or someone hurt her, he was the one she went to.

Now, as Emma reached the bottom of the grand staircase and stepped into the heady whirlwind of the soiree – "On Behalf of the British Library" placards propped up on golden easels, white-aproned waiters tempting with trays of exquisite hors d'oeuvres, black bowties and couture gowns every which way – she had to resist the nervous urge to adjust her dress and jewels. This wasn't her usual style; she was an outdoorsy, sporty tomboy, a fact which led to approximately half a thousand _Daily Mail_ women's columnists speculating that she subconsciously felt the pressure and wished she was a son to live up to the crusty expectations of a hidebound, sexist institution. Emma didn't think so, really, but tonight was going to be scrutinized enough. No need to add grist to their mill.

Across the way, she caught sight of her bodyguard, Captain Liam Jones, looking tall and handsome in his dress Navy uniform. He was quite a bit older than her – thirty-five – and still not over the tragedy that cost him his ship and led to him being reassigned here, to stand in corners while she went about her life. It had to be a step down. Nonetheless, he'd never complained, and as he was the one person with her day and night, who knew all her secrets and understood her struggles, she had found herself developing a bit of a thing for him. God knew why. Likely because pining over her attractive older bodyguard from afar was the most relationship she felt up to attempting; she hadn't dated at all in the four years since Neal. Sometimes she wondered if her brother would inherit the throne after all, by virtue of her dying a childless spinster. No matter her family's wealth and power and worldwide fame, her own position atop every list of the 25 Hottest/Best/Brightest Under 25, completely alone.

That was an incredibly depressing thought, and Emma forced it away, papering on a bright smile instead. She waded into the chaos, shaking hands with the Prime Minister and a few Sir This-or-Thats with their bejeweled trophy wives, some important professors from Oxford and Cambridge, and the British Library senior staff. There were a thousand photo-ops, expertly rehearsed soundbites, and other diplomatic wheel-greasing, and by the time she was halfway through the rounds, Emma was bloody parched. She excused herself to the bar, ordered a glass of soda water and Grenadine, and was just turning around to return to the zoo when she (rather literally) crashed into serious trouble.

It – or rather, he – was perhaps three years older than her, twenty-five or thereabouts. Obnoxiously, gut-wrenchingly handsome: tousled dark hair, blue eyes, artsily perfect stubble, in an all-black tuxedo with a BL lanyard around his neck. But for all his vision of masculine perfection, he appeared completely unaware of any such effect, and instead was absolutely mortified that he had just spilled the Princess of Wales' drink down her million-pound dress. "Oh my God! Oh my God… I'm a clumsy arse, Your Highness, I'm so sorry, I didn't – "

Emma accepted the fistful of cocktail napkins provided by a waiter zooming to the scene of the crime, dabbing at the big wet spot on her thigh; oh god, this _would_ be in the gossip rags tomorrow. She was just trying to wave off his well-meant but backfiring attempts to assist, when a familiar voice groaned, "Bloody hell, Killian. You're going to get both of us sacked."

Emma and the young man looked up in startlement to see Liam himself, regarding the confused proceedings and the damp princess with a wryly amused expression. Seeing her staring, he inclined his head. "Ma'am, this is my little brother – who, as you may have discovered, in fact works at the British Library, rare books and manuscript collection. They put him in there by himself because he's crap with girls."

"Oy, thanks a lot, Liam!" the younger Jones spluttered. "Way to throw me under the bus in front of the princess! I've already made a prat of myself, so toss a drowning man a rope, would you?"

Liam stiffened somewhat at that figure of speech, but grinned crookedly. "Killian, the Princess of Wales, Emma Windsor. Princess, Killian Jones."

"Pleasure," Emma and Killian said awkwardly in unison, as he reached out as if to shake her hand and then jerked back – proving that no matter how gorgeous he was, Liam's assessment might not be far off the mark. Much too good-looking for a librarian. On their third attempt, they shook successfully, and Emma couldn't help but admire his smooth, long-fingered hands, the way they fit so well around hers. She looked up shyly just in time to catch him staring at her, then ripping his gaze away and blushing violently. Oh dear.

Liam, clearly inordinately entertained by the situation, nonetheless took pity on them and towed Emma away to make sure her dress was dry before the next round of photos, leaving Killian trying to dig himself a hole in the middle of the Buckingham Palace ballroom. But Liam returned and clapped a brotherly arm around his shoulders, to signify that all was forgiven, and Emma couldn't help biting her cheek. That and stealing glances at him as she got back to her rounds, to see if he was talking to anyone else. But while women continually appeared, drawn by the same reason she was (they had a functional set of eyeballs and a pulse) none of them seemed to get very far. Poor Killian looked as if he was missing a cup of warm milk and an eight-PM bedtime.

Yet when the draped auction tables (offering special items from the Library's collection for sale, through exclusive partnership with Sotheby's) were moved aside and the orchestra (all first chairs at the London Philharmonic) struck up a waltz, Killian gamely joined in the dancing. Emma eyed him over the Prime Minister's shoulder as she revolved past, took a turn with her father and then with Liam, enjoying the way he lifted and whirled her effortlessly, the moments when the steps brought them close. She had also partnered the U.S. ambassador and the Chief Executive of the Library when Liam tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Princess, Killian has been screwing up his courage for forty minutes to try to ask you, and it's getting a bit painful to watch. Do you mind taking just one dance with him, or should I tell him to forget it?"

"What?" Emma, startled, glanced over just in time to see Killian immediately and poorly once more pretend that he hadn't been staring. "What – did he send you to do this for him?"

"What? No!" Liam looked miffed at the suggestion. "All I said is, the poor lad is struggling. I am trying to help out."

"I – no, I don't mind. I'd be happy to dance with him." Emma took a sip of water, feeling her heart speed up for no good reason. "What's the harm in just once?"

Liam grinned, then offered her his arm and chaperoned her across the ballroom to his gobsmacked sibling, who surely was not expecting the Princess hand-delivered to him, especially after their unfortunate previous encounter. But he recovered enough to make a bow, to which she returned a curtsy, offered his hand, and as the music started up again, pulled her onto the floor.

Within a few short moments, Emma was utterly astounded. The tongue-tied, maladroit, bumbling bunny was completely gone when they were dancing. Killian was smooth, assured, confident, almost daring – spinning her, dipping her, spiraling her out and then pulling her back in, until she nearly forgot that the world beyond the two of them – the glittering gala, the journalists, the cameras, the snide editorials waiting to be written if she failed – even existed. She thought he would shuffle and hop like a drunken penguin, step on her toes, but he didn't, not once. Their gazes remained locked on each other's, and she felt a heat in her cheeks that did not come from exertion. When the waltz finished, they were very close, close enough that she was briefly convinced he might try to kiss her, and did not have the desire to pull away. _That_ would definitely be an exclusive photo spread in _Hello!,_ not to mention spawn months of rumors.

But Killian Jones was not so brave as that. He thanked her, blushing – with the music stopped, the spell broken, he was back to his timid, uncertain self – stepped away, said it was getting quite late and he did have to work tomorrow, begged her pardons and, like Cinderella at the ball with the roles reversed (which rather made sense), fled.

Emma did not dance with anyone else the rest of the night.

* * *

The next day, she was still thinking about him. As expected, the drink-spilling incident headlined the gossip pages, although they did make sure to note that there must have been no hard feelings as "Princess Emma was seen sharing a magical waltz with the handsome stranger." Normally such gushy nonsense would have made Emma's eyes roll right out of her head, but this time it did something different. She dressed casually, in jeans and hoodie and cap and sweatshirt, knotted her long blonde hair into a loose ponytail, and looked at herself in the mirror to confirm that she was indistinguishable from any other City student or commuter. She felt bad about going behind Liam's back like this, as he would probably panic when he realized, but she never got to go anywhere by herself, and it would be awkward to take him along where she was headed. She'd text him. It would be fine.

Disguise completed, Emma successfully snuck out of Buckingham via the staff entrance and headed for the Tube station. It was a surprisingly sunny autumn day, tourists and locals out to enjoy it, and nobody gave her a second glance as she hopped aboard the crowded subway car. The freedom of anonymity, of spontaneity, was thrilling. She was used to the fact that she would be queen one day, that her life and destiny was mapped out for her, but now was one of the times when she felt the cost of it, wished that she had a say, any say, in who she was and what she became. Sometimes it seemed almost too much to pay.

Fifteen minutes or so later, she debarked from the Tube at St Pancras and crossed the street to the handsome, sprawling brick edifice of the Library. Headed inside and up to the manuscript division, where normally one had to apply for access to the collections. Instead she stood there, shifting from foot to foot like a nervous schoolgirl, until Killian Jones appeared. In his native habitat, he was also much less skittish than last night, wearing a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open – which was such a distracting sight that she momentarily forgot why she was there. Then she stepped forward. "Killian?"

He glanced up, smiling politely – then recognized her and almost dropped the stack of papers in his arms. Indeed, he was so flustered that she was the one who had to reassure him it was all right for her to be here, and really she was just in the neighborhood and thought she'd drop by, no trouble or effort. He quickly put the papers down to avoid any more incidents, wiped his hands on his trousers, and immediately apologized for the fact that the drink-spilling incident was the main takeaway from the gala; apparently he had seen the gossip pages too. But she told him that it was nothing, and was attempting to think of something to do or say that would not make her completely obvious, when he blurted out, "Would you – would you like a tour? Your – Pr – Em – ?"

Emma had to smile. "Just call me Emma. And you – you won't get in trouble, will you?"

"Considering last night, I'd hope not." He raised one eyebrow, which should not be as attractive as it was. "But… well… if you had somewhere else to be, of course…"

"No," she said, before she could talk herself out of it. "No, I don't."

They spent the rest of the afternoon together, as Killian led her through the reading rooms and collections archives. Talking about books, he was articulate, confident, funny, and fluent, and there were all sorts of books to be discussed. If you could think of it, it was probably in the British Library, and he showed her where some of their greatest treasures were kept: the Magna Cartas, Gutenberg Bibles, the only existing copy of _Beowulf_ , Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, rich illuminated manuscripts, the prayer books owned by her ancestors, the kings and queens of England, and much more. They were caught a few times by his supervisors, only for them to realize who his special guest was and almost fell over themselves welcoming Emma to the Library, thanking her for last night, and if there was anything they can do. She graciously declined, content with her current company. She could listen to Killian talk about it all day.

At last, the afternoon was over, it was starting to get dark and cold, and to judge by the increasingly frantic chirping of her phone in her pocket, she had better check in with Liam and let him know that she was fine, she was with his brother, before he had a stroke. This she did, only for him to order her to stay there, he was not letting her ride the Underground by herself at rush hour and would come to pick her up with the car; also, he might murder Killian. She made him promise not to do any such thing, then put her phone back to see Killian himself looking guilty. "He's going to kill me, isn't he?"

"No," Emma said hastily. "I talked him out of it."

Killian choked, but the afternoon together had done its work, made things easier between them, and he did not immediately turtle up and go back into his shell. They sat together in the front foyer as the last visitors and researchers drained out for the day, hands almost touching but not quite, until Emma wondered if he was as intensely aware of it as she was. Everything seemed to shrink with him, become smaller and slower and somehow perfect, in a way that she could not even begin to describe, was frightened to. No. Not again. She made a promise. She couldn't.

At last, she saw Liam pull up outside the doors, and got to her feet as Killian did as well. "I – " She bit her lip. "That was – that was wonderful. Thank you."

His eyes stayed on hers. Once more, he was clearly plucking up his courage, but Liam wasn't there to run intervention (yet). "Prin – Emma. May – may I see you again sometime?"

The answer came out immediately, before she could stop or guard herself. "Yes."

They remained mesmerized a moment longer, the word, the promise, the future, the terror of it hanging between them. She couldn't throw him into this world, her world. She had watched her father, watched it crush and weigh on him even for all he has gained. Didn't know if she could do that to Killian Jones.

Didn't know if she could do without.

Their eyes stayed locked. Liam honked the horn.

Emma turned around at last, and went.


	2. Chapter 2

For the next several weeks, as coachloads of schoolchildren tromped through the public rooms of Buckingham and inevitably left behind quid coins, Oyster cards, takeaway wrappers, homework assignments, keychains (and in one dismal incident, chewed gum stuck to the underside of a two-hundred-year-old antique endtable) to the horror and overwork of the Palace caretakers, Emma thought carefully about the fact that she really should try to find a job. She had graduated from St. Andrews with a solid 1:2 degree in English last spring, and as her mother was in good health and could easily be around another thirty or forty years, that meant she had a whole lifetime to fill before she ascended to the role that all of this was preparing her for. In the past, heirs in waiting had led the leisurely lives of spoiled aristocrats, but Britain had gone sour on that idea quite a while ago, what with the future Edward VII drinking, carousing, constructing special sex chairs as not to crush his numberless paramours with his portly princely physique, and other such escapades that had contributed to Queen Victoria's perpetual state of Non-Amusement with her eldest son. Modern royals were expected to go to college and do something at least resembling a career, not just smashing wine bottles on ocean liners, visiting ill children in hospital, and riding down the Mall in fancy carriages, escorted by men in tall furry hats. They were to have charitable causes, public involvement, productive investment, and to do enough to keep down the constant low-level mumbling that the royal family was an absurdly outdated cabal of useless wankers living it up on the UK taxpayers' dime. It was, to say the least, a delicate balance.

Moreover, now that Emma's status as heiress to the throne was confirmed, it would soon be time for her to conduct her first solo overseas tour; she was expected to have visited, if perhaps not all fifty-three countries of the full Commonwealth, at least the sixteen of which she would be ruling monarch by the time she became queen. She had been to several of them as a child with her parents, but those probably didn't count. They had suggested she start this autumn, in fact, but there hadn't been time to pull together a state visit on short notice, and besides, nobody wanted to go to Canada in winter, not even Canadians. So it would be next spring and summer, which further illustrated the complications faced by a young royal trying to have a career; most regular jobs wouldn't let you just take off for several months to jaunt around the world. Nor were you going to stick the future head of state of close to a third of the earth's population behind a coffee counter. Security and logistical concerns had to be factored in. There were plenty of online crazies obsessed with the beautiful blonde princess. If one of _those_ showed up, at the very least Liam had to be there to punch them in the nose and rugby-tackle them to the ground.

Overall, Emma's options were slim. She supposed she could try to catch on at a London publishing house, but she was also aware that most entry-level positions in publishing were drudge work, and if she _did_ have a certain freedom to select her occupation, it seemed a bit pointless not to take advantage of it. Interning on a movie set? Maybe in the short term, but not for a career. Then what –

And then, almost blindingly simply, she had it.

* * *

"I'm sorry, Princess," Liam said. "You want me to _what?"_

"You – heard – me." It was the middle of their usual run, and Emma was now wishing that she had waited until breakfast to bring it up. Every morning, he loaded her into the Range Rover and drove her out to Richmond for a jog in the park, once she had mentioned that she wanted to get in shape. At least it was _supposed_ to be a jog, and that was how Emma took it. Liam, however, ran at least five miles a day in addition to performing a hundred pushups and a hundred crunches, and as such tended to unmercifully smoke her in his dust. Not too far, of course; he couldn't be out of eyesight, but he had the annoying skill of being able to speak perfectly normally while she was dying like a wounded warthog in the savannah. Hence probably why he was making her repeat herself. Liam's competitive streak was no joke. He wouldn't even go easy on little Neal in video games.

"I said," Emma wheezed. "Ask – Killian – if I can get a job – at the British Library."

Liam raised one eyebrow, in that habit the Jones brothers apparently shared. "It wouldn't be glamorous, you know. Cataloguing and fetch-and-carrying and making sure nobody walks out the door with Anne Boleyn's copy of Tyndale's New Testament in their backpack. Killian once spent six weeks organizing the daily editions of every London newspaper between 1850-1855. Not exactly riveting."

"Just – ask – him."

Liam hesitated, in a way that Emma knew him well enough to tell that he didn't want to do it. As they slowed to a walk beneath the half-bare trees, fallen leaves scuffling beneath their trainers, she said, "What? Why not?"

"Only… I don't know that it's entirely fair to Killian," Liam said, a bit dryly. "Expecting him to do his job normally with you around."

"What do you mean? I wouldn't be there to distract him, I'd be doing the same things he – "

"Whether or not you meant it, Princess," Liam said, even more dryly, "you can be assured that you would have that effect. And Killian is… it's a good place for him, there. I wouldn't want anything to happen that could threaten that."

Emma considered that no matter how much Liam teased his bookish, awkward, mishap-prone sibling, he was also extremely protective of him, for good reason. Liam didn't talk about his past very much, but she knew that the boys were the products of a broken working-class London home, mother dead and father drunk or absent, so that Liam had had to be both of Killian's parents as well as his brother. As such, Killian was his baby, who had to be shielded from the harsher shocks of life when he had already experienced enough of them. She couldn't blame Liam for it, but at the same time, she knew a little too much about living in a bubble, and the fact that while being pushed out of the nest might be jarring, it was the only way to fly. "How about we let Killian decide? Can you at least ask him?"

Liam opened his mouth, apparently discovered that he had no answer for that, and shut it. They finished their circuit, reached the Range Rover (looking rather lonely by itself in the car park) and climbed in. Hopefully they were still early enough to dodge the worst of rush-hour traffic on their drive back into the city, and the silence remained as they pulled out. Emma watched the world go by as she always did – at a safe remove, behind a thick sheet of bulletproof glass – and had just about decided that Liam wasn't going to answer when he said abruptly, "All right. I'll ask him."

* * *

The Queen and the Duke were in Scotland, the Duke having been invited to open the new wing at the University of Edinburgh in his titular capacity, and Emma had the royal family's private quarters almost to herself. The House of Windsor was smaller than usual these days, anyway. Mary Margaret's only sister Princess Ruby, Emma's aunt, was single and childless, and lived in a massive, probably haunted old pile in Northumbria. Both David's parents, her paternal grandparents, were dead, and his twin brother James had caused no end of embarrassments for the royal family in the past, by pretending to be the prince in various business transactions and investing the profits in various shaggy-dog schemes. At least so Emma had heard, as she barely remembered her uncle; he had died in a paragliding accident in Italy when she was five, and the conspiracy theorists had never shut up about their belief that "the Firm" had had him done in to put a halt to his brand-tarnishing shenanigans. Certainly nobody had been too broken up about his loss, not even David.

Then there was the queen mother, Regina Windsor – actually stepmother, the second wife of King George, Mary Margaret and Ruby's father. She lived in Kensington with her husband Robin, who had been created Duke of Kent to give him the proper pedigree to marry her; the dirty laundry in this case held that they had been sleeping together well before the king was actually dead. They had two grown sons, Henry and Roland, and Regina was the member of the royal family who could be reliably counted on for a scathing quote about the rest of her relatives, something shocking at an official appearance, or some sort of rumored scandal in her household. For this reason Mary Margaret had tried to minimize her stepmother's role in public life, and every six months or so the tabloids could be counted on to report the sordid details of the feud between the Queen and the Queen Mother, very few of which were actually true. After years of battles, the two women had realized that they were hurting the monarchy and themselves the most, and Regina had grudgingly accepted that she could not have the same influence on her stepdaughter's reign that she had had on her husband's. An _entente cordiale_ was therefore in place, but Emma and her grandmother were not close. It was a shame, as Regina was one of the few others who could have helped her prepare for the role, but the damage appeared done.

As such, Emma's upbringing had been rather lonely. Henry and Roland were the only members of the royal family even close to her age, but they were both in their thirties and married now, and the rift between their respective mothers meant that they and Emma were not exactly bosom buddies. Her best friend was probably Crown Princess Elsa of Norway, whom she had met in the usual haunts for rich young European royals; she had also gotten close to Elsa's aunt, the Queen of Norway's sister Ingrid. Indeed, the British and Norwegian heiresses were planning to spend the Christmas break together at Emma's chalet in Switzerland, for as Princess of Wales, she was entitled to her own holiday. Though she'd probably have to be back to attend church with the rest of the royal family on Christmas Day, as the Queen would be spending it on her estate of Sandringham in Norfolk as usual.

There was also, Emma thought, the fact that she was now entitled to move out of Buckingham and establish her own household at either St. James' Palace or Clarence House, which she was definitely interested in doing. Buckingham had never been the favorite residence of anyone in the royal family and she really needed her own place. She loved her parents dearly, but now that she had graduated from university, she didn't want to just move back home, no matter how common the activity might be among other members of her age group. If she was going to make something of herself, or ever have a social or romantic life again, the first step was leaving here. Liam was scrupulously discreet, bless his heart, but good luck getting a guy in here without the entire staff knowing. Which in short order, meant the newspapers would as well. Everyone who worked with them on a daily basis was vetted and background-checked, of course, but those anonymous tipsters had to come from somewhere. In the past, Emma had identified the loose-lipped among her inner circle by telling one person one thing and someone else another, and seeing which version ended up in the _Sun._ As such, she had learned caution and self-sufficiency early on. Her default was to assume that someone would sell her secrets out for money, because eventually almost everyone did. It was, apparently, just too tempting.

She was thinking of this, a bit glumly, when her phone buzzed on the arm of the Louis XIV sofa, startling her. She fumbled for it, swiped it open without looking at the number, and said, "Hello?"

There was a long pause on the other end, as the caller adjusted to the shock of reaching her in person. Then a voice said, "Your – Prin – Em – ?"

Emma's heart gave a pleased, surprised little twirl. "You're going to have to find something more efficient to call me," she teased. "Hi."

"H-hi." Killian Jones cleared his throat. "Er – Liam gave me the number, I hope it's all right to ring you directly. I heard you might – that you wanted, well – that you were interested in working at the Library?"

"I – yes, I am," Emma said. "Liam wasn't keen on the idea, but he said he'd ask you. So – so you agree?"

"Yes, yes of course I do!" Killian sounded shocked that she would even have to ask. "I asked the RBM curator, and we'd be honored to have you. In fact, we just got a huge bequest of books and papers from Isaac Heller's estate, we could use the extra hands."

"Get out. _The_ Isaac Heller?"

"The one and only," Killian said proudly.

"That's amazing!" Emma couldn't hold back her excitement. Isaac Heller had been the archetype of the eccentric, reclusive literary genius for years; he was actually American by birth, but had been such a resolute Anglophile that most people tended to forget. He shut himself up in his rambling country mansion in Yorkshire and produced a long succession of bestselling novels, along with some highly regarded books on literary criticism, mostly about fairytales. He had passed away in rather mysterious circumstances earlier this year, and apparently willed his entire oeuvre to the Library. "When can I start?"

Killian laughed. "Tomorrow at 9.00 am?"

"Yes – yes. I'd love to."

"Great. See you then?"

"See you then."

* * *

Liam, predictably, was rather stunned that Killian had actually agreed, and in the car the next morning, he made her promise that she would take it easy on the poor boy. But by the time they pulled in and parked, Emma had basically tuned him out in her excitement. Liam, of course, had to accompany her, which was a bit awkward in view of the whole thing, and she really didn't think that a deranged bibliomaniac was going to leap out at her from behind the card catalogue, but protocol was protocol, and if it got everyone to cooperate, so much the better. Her parents weren't back from Scotland yet, but Emma figured it was better to ask forgiveness than permission. She was a grownup, after all. This was her call.

They went inside, were goggled at by the interns, and escorted up to the place she had visited Killian before. He was there along with his supervisor, the curator, and they welcomed Emma effusively, pronounced themselves delighted, and then took her in to spend the morning in a deathly boring lecture about the approximately 1,257,634 rules for working at the Library. Of course she was the Princess, but that did not equate to special treatment, as this place was not Bob's Drugstore and countless historical treasures depended on the proper execution of her duties. But Emma listened intently, lapping it up. She didn't want to be "Your Royal Highness" here. She just wanted to be Emma.

At last, however, the procedurals were through, they took a lunch break, and then spent the afternoon barely scratching the surface of the first of the hundreds of boxes from the Heller estate. Everything had to be extensively described, registered, photographed, preserved, labeled, sorted, and stored, and thus it promised to take an abominably long time, but Emma did not care. She went home that night with eyes crossed, fingers blistered, back aching, and feet killing her. She had rarely felt so happy in her life.

That was how the rest of the autumn proceeded. Emma had managed to keep her new job out of the news, and as such she enjoyed a rare degree of freedom and autonomy at the Library. Her coworkers knew who she was, of course, but none of them talked, and since she worked in the back away from the visitors, nobody came to gawk at her like a zoo exhibit. She and Killian were paired on the Heller project, and as such spent every day together digging through the boxes and unearthing all kinds of items that even Killian, with his encyclopedic knowledge of all things literary, could not identify. The eminent author had apparently owned books of which no other copy existed in the world, along with manuscripts nearly as convoluted and impenetrable as the famous Voynich, at the Beinecke Library at Yale University in America. Emma joked that they must be the sorcerer's apprentice's notes, to which Killian grinned and shrugged. "I hope so," he said. "What's a good story without a little magic?"

What, indeed. The weeks of working together with just the two of them had wrought nearly as miraculous a change in Killian. He was still shy and skittish, but to far less a degree than previously, and there was so much more to him than just Liam's clumsy little brother. He could read at least six languages, identify a manuscript or incunabula's date and country of origin nearly at a glance, and spent hours digging up some of his favorites to show Emma – not the famous ones that anyone else would know, but ones where monks announced, "I am done copying this long gospel, now I am going to get drunk," or doodled in the margins, or snarked at stupid things their contemporaries had said, or otherwise let bits and pieces of their actual personalities shine through the veil of time. The Library also owned royal acts and charters from the twelfth century on, and Killian accessed these for Emma as well, tangible relics of her ancestors over eight hundred years. Born into a royal dynasty almost a millennium old, directly descended from William the Conqueror, Emma had always been uniquely aware of history and her place in it, but this was the first time she had really felt it.

All in all, it was getting harder every day to maintain her resolve never to date another commoner. She reminded herself that while Killian might be king of this realm, surely he would crumple if faced with the bright lights and nonstop scrutiny and relentless pressure of her world. She liked him – more than liked him, in fact – and was fairly sure he felt the same for her, but it seemed stuck in a holding pattern, both of them knowing that they could not make the first move to go further. Liam, who sat in the corner of the reading room with some book or journal or other (he must have gone through half the Library's archives on the Royal Navy by now, which was no mean feat) was already prone to clear his throat loudly if they spent too long accidentally getting lost in each other's eyes. Whether it was to remind them that the boxes were not going to unpack themselves, or to warn Killian not to try anything funny with the princess, or to warn Emma not to toy with his little brother's heart, or all three, she did not know, but it was definitely getting obvious. She couldn't keep ignoring it forever, but she might try.

That, therefore, was how the autumn passed. And then, Christmas.


	3. Chapter 3

It was December sixth, and London had been even more vehemently opposed to the concept of decent weather than usual for the last six weeks, resulting in a miserable cavalcade of rain, more rain, freezing rain, fog, and the old favorite, the ice storm that shut down City transit and made Scotland laugh at them, all the while never with any snow to put anyone in a holiday mood. At least everything was beautifully decorated, including the annual Buckingham Palace Christmas tree, which stood eighteen feet tall and was velvet-roped off in its own nook for the admiration of the public. The royal family's actual tree was in their private quarters, also roped off to discourage Prince Neal from leaving his superhero figures in its branches. Even the Duke of York did not get to improve the stately traditional ornaments with Iron Man doing wheelies.

As for Emma, she had been working so much that she barely noticed either of these adornments. She knew that she had earned her bona fides as an actual employee, and not just a prize public-relations piece, when the curator yelled at her for leaving a box of old books from the Heller estate in the light and air for too long, even if she had wanted to cry afterward. But Killian had comforted her and told her stories of horrible things he had done as a new employee and it was a miracle they hadn't chucked him on the spot, and bought her a large hot chocolate with cinnamon (how had he known she liked it that way?) from the Library café until she felt better.

The sixth was a Friday, the last day Emma was supposed to be there until the new year, and she was having trouble with the idea that she wouldn't see Killian until then – not even through Liam, as he too would be taking the holidays off. She hoped it would be good for him. He had gotten increasingly abstracted and not quite there over the autumn, unless to interrupt any potential moment between her and Killian with Swiss-train-like predictability. To speak of which, she was leaving for her Alps chalet on Sunday, and while she was not sure that Killian would not completely panic if she asked if he wanted to come with her, still she was extremely close to doing just that. It wasn't as if he would be the only guest – Elsa's younger sister Princess Anna and her boyfriend Kristoff were also coming, and if he was worried about missing Christmas at home, they would be back in London by the twenty-third, so Emma could go up to Norfolk with the rest of the royal family. And if he _didn't_ want to… well, he could always say no, and she would just have to deal with it.

Finding a moment to ask him that day, however, proved almost impossible. There was a box of documents to prepare to be sent to Canada on special loan for some exhibit or other, constant interruptions for Killian to go fetch a manuscript for somebody, and Liam's glowering presence in the corner even when it was just the two of them. Finally, fearing to miss her chance, Emma reached out and snagged Killian's shirt sleeve as he was returning from dealing with a Royal Holloway professor who wanted the Pipe Rolls from Edward II's reign _immediately_ , and did not seem to understand that Killian could not just snap his fingers and make them appear from thin air. "Do you – would you like to – would you like to go to Switzerland with me?"

Killian looked blank, then astonished. "What?"

"Do you want to come on my ski holiday?" Emma could feel her cheeks going pink again. "To Switzerland, St. Moritz resort. I have a chalet there. It's for just a few weeks before Christmas, we get back two days beforehand."

"I – I can't ski."

"I'll teach you. I mean, all this time, you've been teaching me so much… I just meant… I thought you might – "

"So kind of you, but I don't know if I could possibly – "

"Honestly, it'll just be a – "

" – don't want to make an idiot of myself even more than – "

They realized at the same instant that they were talking over each other, shut up, looked at each other expectantly, and giggled in mortification. Then Killian gave her that shy, dazzling smile, eyes sparkling, and said at last, "If – if you're sure, Princess, I – I would… I would very much enjoy that."

"Yes, I… I'd really love it." Emma noticed that their hands were close together on the pile of books, and edged her fingers just a bit nearer. "I just want to thank you for everything you've done, for…"

Killian, for his part, was staring at her as if she had just run out of a dark corridor and crashed into him, and he had seen the sun for the first time in his life. His hand twitched as well, as they moved into each other's space, so there could be no doubt about what she had meant in asking, and what he meant in accepting. Her head tilted back, lips parted, until she was sure he would kiss her now, didn't understand why he wasn't making a move to do so, reached for him with the intent of teaching him something else beforehand, and –

"Oy, you two! They're looking for you, Killian, what do you think you're doing?"

Killian sprang away from Emma as if she had turned radioactive, gave his brother a guilty look, and scuttled out the door at top speed. Emma, for her part, gave Liam an extremely irritated one. "Don't you think this is overkill? You can't keep skulking behind bookshelves to pop up and interrupt us, bodyguard or not. I know you're protective of both of us, but I – I like him. Do you do this with all his girlfriends, or is it something I'm getting the special pleasure of?"

"No," Liam said frankly. "For the reason that he's never come close to having one. So I have to make it up on the fly, especially now that the person of his interest is my employer and also the Princess of bloody Wales."

"Wait, come again? He's _never_ had a girlfriend? When he looks like that and he's – how old?"

"Twenty-five," Liam supplied, looking somewhat amused despite himself. "They've certainly tried, but as I said, he's terrible at it, and you're the first woman who hasn't terrified him to within an inch of his life. I just think it might be better for him to get some experience with a nice normal lass, instead of trying to jump into the deep end of the pool with no water, which it would be if anything was to… shall we say… happen between you two."

Emma opened her mouth, then shut it. Finally she said, "I think that's our lookout, Liam. Not yours."

He likewise snapped his mouth shut with an audible click. "Very well, Princess. As you say."

"As I say," Emma agreed, and turned away, to demonstrate that she considered the matter closed. After a moment, she heard Liam retreat, but she knew better than to think that he had given it up. Not that man. Not a Jones brother. If nothing else, she had already learned that they were too bloody stubborn to live.

* * *

Emma spent Saturday packing and getting ready. She traveled ridiculously light by royal standards – only two suitcases and a backpack, along with her ski gear, as she was actually planning to do that and not just attractively lark around the lodge in a name-brand jacket and artfully tousled hair. She had arranged for Killian to be picked up at his flat and driven to the royal family's private airfield just outside London – she had tried to get her parents to let her travel on a commercial flight, but they wouldn't. So they were flying to the little airport of Samedan in eastern Switzerland, from which it was about half an hour drive to St. Moritz, and her household staff was shipping out today to get the chalet spruced up in advance of her arrival. After that, however, Emma had insisted that they all go back to London. It was hard to relax and really feel as if you were outside the royal bubble if there were still servants everywhere.

She didn't sleep much that night for excitement, and was up and dressed early the next morning, herded down to the loaded Range Rover after a quick farewell to her parents. Yet another round of sleet had made traffic its usual glacial self, so by the time they actually got to the airfield, it was only about fifteen minutes until the car containing Killian showed up. The poor thing clearly had no idea how he was supposed to dress for a royal getaway, and was shivering in a suit and tie, clutching one battered duffel bag. It was hoisted into the cargo hold alongside her matched black Louis Vuitton luggage set, and they went on board.

They were in the air soon after, and touched down in Switzerland by midafternoon. It was in fact, Killian confessed, the first time he had ever been out of Britain, and while his head was still rotating as if on ball bearings, he spoke perfect German to the tarmac attendants and kept up a lively conversation with their driver as they pulled out in the Rolls-Royce that had been sent to await their arrival. They wended their way slowly up hairpin-turn mountain roads with the jagged, awe-inspiring, white bulwark of the Alps on the horizon, bathed in the last rose-gold glow of the day, and Killian turned to her in amazement. "It's… it's so beautiful!"

"Yes, it is," Emma agreed, delighted. "We need to get you out of the Library more often."

Killian did not demur, nose practically glued to the window until they finally, past dusk, pulled into the long, gated drive, the snow-covered chalet glowing welcomingly at the end. The staff came out to greet them and get the bags, and everything had been stocked and prepared and decorated, a Christmas tree twinkling by the fire in the hearth and a hearty supper prepared. The Norwegian contingent wasn't here yet, as they were arriving tomorrow, and once Emma thanked the staff and handed them their bonus cheques – only a small security force would be staying in the on-grounds hut – they departed to have the driver take them back to Samedan and their own flight home in the private jet, and she and Killian were actually alone, with no possibility of unwanted interruptions, for the first time in the four months since they had met.

Both of them were exquisitely aware of it, and the air was charged even as they wolfed down dinner and Emma insisted on doing the dishes herself. Then they went to sit by the fire, admiring the tree, and he finally and timidly extended his arm, all the while not looking at her, as if it was completely by accident and it could have found its way there on perfectly legitimate business without any input whatsoever from him. But she hesitated, then grasped hold of his wrist and pulled it down around her shoulders, snuggling into him.

Killian seemed momentarily to forget how to breathe, and she gave him a minute. Then she reached out with her own arm and linked it around his waist, feeling suddenly almost as shy as he was at touching him even this much, the heady freedom of being out from under the disapproving eye of overprotective older brothers and library curators and lurking paparazzi and all the other thousand and one distractions that had kept a distance between them in London, even as they themselves struggled and stumbled and stubbornly blundered closer to each other nonetheless. Their breathing slowed, shallowed, matched, as they closed the final distance, until their foreheads came to rest. And then, Emma reached up with her other hand to play in the soft dark ruff of hair at the back of his neck, and as their lips parted, followed each other's, and finally met, she taught him how to kiss.

* * *

They were woken early the next morning by the bizarre, unknown, possibly illegal meteorological phenomenon of blazing sunlight – which they had almost forgotten actually existed, having not seen it in London since the middle of October. They had fallen asleep snuggled together under the thick down comforter in Emma's bed; after the joy of not having to let go, they had seen no reason to do so, and Emma couldn't remember the last time she had enjoyed the innocent simplicity of something so much. The prospect of being the instructor and love guru in this – whatever it was between them – was oddly and deeply appealing.

They got dressed and hurried out. St. Moritz was a favorite of the well-heeled jetset crowd, and all kinds of seven-figure net worths strolled or skied or snowshoed past them as they headed to the lodge to rent Killian some equipment. Once they had done so and gotten him into it, it transpired that while he was somewhat clumsy and awkward in the ordinary course of things, it only took attaching him to a pair of cutting-edge downhill Rossignols to turn him into a total disaster. Emma was obliged to stay close behind him, holding him around the waist and skis carefully positioned between his, as she helped him lean into the basic rhythm of the turns. "You're not that bad," she said, encouragingly if untruthfully. "We just need to build up some muscle memory. Then your subconscious will take over."

Killian shot a wounded look at the six-year-olds whizzing past them down the slopes. "Do you mean to imply I could ever actually be _good_ at this?"

"Regular Bode Miller," Emma assured him, with a grin into the back of his neck. "I've seen how well you can dance, after all."

Killian still seemed extremely dubious to believe any such thing, but after a few more trips down the bunny hill, a remarkable transformation was already taking place – to the point that Emma actually felt confident letting go of him, as he plunged away like a runaway Zamboni and somehow arrived at the bottom in one piece. "Will you look at that," he said in shock, as she pulled up after him. "I'm a natural."

If not about to race in any World Cups for Britain any time soon, he did indeed pick it up quickly, and he and Emma spent the rest of the day on the groomed cruisers, green and even a blue by the end of the afternoon – doubtless when Elsa hit the champagne powder tomorrow, she'd be dragging Emma down the double-blacks with her. When they finally quit as the sun slipped behind the ridge, Killian announced he had never had so much fun in his entire life, and they slung their skis over their shoulders and walked hand in hand back to the chalet, where the others had just arrived and were unpacking. Anna's boyfriend Kristoff was especially disappointed to hear what a prime day of "shredding" he had missed (he, rather horrifying the rest of the resort, was a _snowboarder_ ) and vowed to start making it up first thing tomorrow morning. Then he and Killian were introduced, sized each other up, and within about fifteen minutes were playing a life-or-death game of Scrabble that ended with Killian's crushing victory. Kristoff was still protesting that "absquatulate" was not a word even as Anna showed it to him on her phone, and Killian got a celebratory kiss on the cheek and cuddle from Emma. This did not go unnoticed by the others, and when Killian was in the shower, Elsa cornered her in the kitchen and demanded to know if they were, in fact, a _thing._

"I don't know," Emma hedged. Whatever it was, a relationship or otherwise, it was so good and simple and sweet that she didn't want to say anything, put a label on it, for fear of changing it or breaking the spell. "I just – I like him. He works at the British Library, and we met when he… well, when he spilled my drink on me."

Elsa gave her the "uh-huh" look, but didn't press. Soon dinner was ready, anyway, and they crowded in to eat. Kristoff wanted a rematch, which he got, but in which Killian smoked him again, so there could be no doubt at who the reigning Scrabble champion was. And once more that night, Killian and Emma crawled into bed together, curled close, and fell asleep.

In such fashion, the two weeks passed. St. Moritz, which averaged over three hundred days of sunshine a year, was a total and totally welcomed change from England, and both Killian and Emma managed to get quite tan by the time the winter solstice rolled around, signaling the end of their vacation. They reluctantly packed up and got ready to head back to London, bidding Elsa, Anna, and Kristoff farewell, and were quiet in the car as they drove to the Samedan airport. Emma was about to invite him to Norfolk Christmas as well, but that was something only done for extremely serious prospects, and she didn't want to subject someone as sweet and innocent as him to, say, Regina. She would eat him for _lunch,_ and he would start running in the opposite direction and not stop until he fell into the Irish Sea.

Still, after how close they had gotten, the last thing she wanted to do was to let go of him now. They sat together on the flight home, her cuddling on his shoulder and his chin on her head, until they finally landed in the soggy, foggy, wet, freezing night, unfolded reluctantly, got their bags, and had one last quick kiss on the tarmac before they went their separate ways. She clambered into the Range Rover and unexpectedly found herself trying to hold back tears.

It was a slow drive to Norfolk, and they pulled up before the gabled brick mansion of Sandringham House close to midnight. Emma got her own bags and crept up into her room, crawling into bed. It was strange to sleep by herself again, and it felt too big. But at last, she lay there with her eyes closed until exhaustion finally took over and dragged her down.

* * *

The holiday arrived in traditional fashion. The family opened gifts on Christmas Eve, walked to church on Christmas Day through the usual crowds of royal-watchers, and had dinner afterward, served by white-gloved butlers in the elaborate nineteenth-century dining room. Then Prince David, the Duke of Kent, Henry, and Roland retired to the drawing room to try out this year's cigars, and Emma was left with the Queen, the Queen Mother, and Princess Ruby, which was always a combustible combination. Regina seemed slightly less acerbic than usual this year; maybe she was finally mellowing in her sixties. Ruby was tipsy and talkative, which was in fact usual, and Mary Margaret wanted to talk about plans for Emma's overseas tour, which seemed intimidating. Emma finally had to fess up that she had been working at the British Library all autumn, which none of the older women had apparently been aware of, and which they seemed to find rather funny. "But Emma, darling," her aunt said, tapping the ashes from her cigarette into an exquisite porcelain salver. "Aren't you bored, shut up with all those dusty books? You're so young and beautiful. You should _date."_

Emma bit her lip, managing not to let anything show on her face, as Regina predictably made several caustic comments about Neal Cassidy and the embarrassment that her last attempt at doing so had caused for everyone. Not that Emma minded hearing him badmouthed, exactly, considering how crappy he had been to her at the end of their relationship, but it just reminded her of how much it had hurt, how much she had loved and trusted him and never seen what he wanted all along. After a moment, causing all three of them to look surprised, she excused herself and went upstairs to her room.

She sprawled on the bed, toying with her phone, wondering if there was any elaborate celebration she might be interrupting Killian from. It occurred to her that she didn't even know where he lived, apart from somewhere in London. He and Liam were probably together, as they didn't have any other family that she knew of. Surely it wouldn't be out of line to ring and wish them a happy Christmas. She hadn't spoken to him since they got back from St. Moritz and she was already missing him terribly.

Emma rolled over, knowing that she didn't have long alone before she would have to go back down and watch her mother's speech on television with the rest of the family. She scrolled through her news app with half an eye, was about to exit it and call – then stopped dead.

That was when she saw the headline.


	4. Chapter 4

After a long moment spent trying to gather herself, Emma scrolled to Killian's entry in her contacts and hit Call at once, listening to it ringing and praying he'd pick up, but wondering what on earth she would say even if he did. What would a pathologically shy, awkward librarian, whose first kiss had been with her a fortnight ago, _do_ in this situation? It wasn't as if they could put the cat back in the bag, not with the dozen or so big, high-def photos set under the blaring banner headline: PRINCESS EMMA GETS COSY WITH NEW LOVE ON SWISS SKI HOLIDAY. There were several of her holding him around the waist, a few of them walking hand in hand, and even one of her snuggling against him as he was kissing her cheek – all in all, there could be no doubt that they did indeed look very couple-y. The article below named him as Killian Jones, 25, of Stroud Green, North London, currently employed at the British Library in the rare book and manuscript division. Evidently HRH found it adorable when boys spilled their drink on her, given how they had met (cue a picture of their eventful first encounter at the benefit gala). It remained to be seen, however, if this romance would have a fairytale ending, seeing as the country surely remembered what had happened with her university flame Neal Cassidy. How _did_ the Queen enjoy the fact that her young son had taken to calling himself that, by the by?

Emma gritted her teeth, still listening to the phone ring. She had glanced at the byline, but barely needed to. Of course it would be Robert Gold. The multibillionaire owner of half of Britain's media conglomerate, he enjoyed absolutely nothing so much as thumbing the royal family in the eye at every occasion. As he was from Glasgow and had famously donated staggering sums of money to Scottish Independence, that possibly explained it, but after several high-profile lawsuits, he had become much more sly and careful about how he did it. This article also pointedly noted that the Princess of Wales was taking luxurious vacations while the rest of the country was still recovering from the austerity budget, and hoped that the taxpayers of Britain had wished her merry Christmas at their expense.

The ringing cut off, rolling over to Killian's voice mail, and Emma paused, then hung up and dialed Liam instead, as much as she was not looking forward to this conversation. In what might or might not be a good thing, he actually picked up. "Princess."

"H-hi." Emma could already tell that he did not sound pleased. "Look, I – "

"Had no idea that that was the big holiday scoop?" Liam finished. "Well, neither did the rest of us. Hence our entire street is now blocked in by the paparazzi, and nobody can get out to the shops or have their family get in. There are a couple of blokes digging through our rubbish bin right now, I'm looking down at them. So Christmas is ruined for everyone in our neighborhood and they likely hate us, and there's also the fact that Killian will be hounded relentlessly when he goes back to work after the new year. I take it that's not what you had in mind?"

Emma winced. "Liam, I… I know you don't exactly approve, but it's not my fault someone took those pictures and sold them to Gold. I can't live my life in a prison cell. There's always going to be someone with a camera. But Killian… is he… is he all right?"

"Bit in shock, I think," Liam said flatly. "We've had to keep the curtains drawn because there's more of them on the terrace across the way, trying to get a good shot into our living room. Perhaps they'll go away at nightfall, but I'm not sure."

"Oh god," Emma muttered. "I'll try to make this right. I don't know how, but I'll do something, I promise. But I can't tell you that that will include forgetting about Killian, because it won't. I'm not going to just use him and lose him. I – I care too much for that."

She heard Liam blow out a slow breath. "I was afraid of that," he mumbled at last. "Princess, just… be careful. You have no idea how precious he is to me, and if his life is now going to consist of being stalked by Robert bloody Gold's pay-per-photo vultures every time he steps outside… it's not going to be good for him. And if the day comes where it's his sanity or his relationship with you, both of us have a moral duty to choose the latter."

"I – I know." It stuck in Emma's throat. This was exactly why she had been afraid of falling for Killian in the first place, of letting him in, of knowing that someone like him could never survive the shark tank that the royal family lived in. But now it was too late, and she had, and she did, and like the photos themselves, they could not be untaken, unmade, unknown. No going back to the start. Nobody said it was easy. Nobody said it would be this hard.

* * *

She didn't want to distract everyone from her mother's big moment, but she thought it might be best if this news came from her, rather than as yet another unwelcome surprise. So once they had watched the Queen's Christmas Speech with the rest of the nation, and after Regina had flicked the telly off with only one sardonic comment about it, Emma braced herself and said, "Ex-excuse me? I – thought I should let you know. There are – some pictures of me in the news, from my vacation. With… with a man."

The effect took a moment to sink in, but when it did, it was remarkable. Princess Ruby sat bolt upright, splashing her glass of peppermint schnapps, and demanded to know everything, Regina rolled her eyes heavenward, the Queen looked alarmed, and the Duke of Edinburgh, deeply indignant. Emma was forced to confess that it was the shy-but-gorgeous librarian she had met by literal accident at the gala and had been working with all autumn, which seemed to go a great deal in her family's eyes to explaining her affection for the job. Which was not quite true, as she enjoyed it for its own sake and not merely for Killian's, but it certainly hadn't hurt. Nonetheless, she put an end to the interrogation by revealing that it was one of Robert Gold's troublemaking attempts, which had the instant result of uniting the room behind her. The one thing the Windsors had in common, if sometimes nothing else, was their loathing of him, and Regina openly speculated that she could call some old friends and destroy a few of his stock portfolios, the good ones. Mary Margaret gave her a scandalized _"Mother!"_ look, and reminded her sternly of the roles and expectations attached to their positions as public figures, as indeed the face of the United Kingdom. The Queen still seemed to genuinely think that they could all get along, that they could pull together, and as such, she ran a tight ship, taking a dim view of any scandals or indeed any activities that could be interpreted unfavorably. She strictly adhered to the principle of public neutrality and decorous remove from all politics, and Emma had found herself wondering if she'd do the same. It worked for her mother, but she wasn't sure about her.

When Mary Margaret finished, Regina, also as usual, ignored her completely and glanced back to Emma with a shrug. "So you know, the offer does stand."

Emma couldn't help blinking, as this was in fact, in its own way, the nicest thing her step-grandmother had ever done for her. But while she was still attempting not to imagine the disaster that would result if Robert Gold discovered the Queen Mother meddling with his finances, her father broke in. "Who's this boy? Have I met him?"

"No," Emma said hastily, "and you're not going to. You might, I don't know, stab him in the back or something."

"Has he done something to deserve being stabbed?"

 _"No._ He's as sweet as they come. The kind of person who would drink goat's milk instead of rum. So keep your hands off him."

"As long as he keeps his hands off you," His Royal Highness Prince David, formerly David Nolan, private citizen of Sheffield and thus rather adept at football-rivalry dustups, muttered not-quite-quietly. His wife elbowed him smartly in the ribs, and he winced.

"Excuse me," Emma said. "I _am_ an adult, and for that matter, I think it's time we went ahead with the plans to move me into Clarence House at St. James'. I really need my own place."

Her parents looked both surprised and hurt. Emma knew that they rued all the time they had missed with her growing up, constantly called away by official duties and overseas trips, the fact that while they had tried as hard as they could to be attentive, modern, hands-on parents, she was still largely raised by the faithful royal nanny, Johanna, who had raised Mary Margaret before her. It had made her think that while she was in the abstract interested in the idea of a husband and kids, and practically speaking would have to provide the latter, which would then require the former because the ruling Queen of England could _not_ have illegitimate children, she was scared of it. Didn't think she'd be any great shakes as a mother, because how could she be? She loved her parents, but she had never felt deeply connected to them, or that they had been and done everything they could be, and no matter how many times she rationalized it away, she still felt the sting of it. Didn't know if she could pass that on to another generation of royal children, but because of her position, would have to. _A golden cage is still a cage._

"Sweetheart," her mother began at last, cautiously. "You know we wouldn't mind having you at Buckingham a bit longer. I hope you don't feel as if – as if you have to run away."

"No," Emma said. "But I still need to go."

Mary Margaret opened her mouth again, but Regina cut her off. "Of course she needs her own place, do you think she wants to be stuck in that miserable pile with David threatening to assassinate her boyfriend? Make the plans and get her to Clarence House, you can always visit her if her living across the city is too far. Heaven knows why you haven't done this already."

"Oh yes," Ruby said, and tipped a conspiratorial wink at her niece. "She needs her own place. I'll bring a few housewarming gifts for you, darling. _Special_ ones."

David nearly had an aneurysm on the spot.

* * *

Even this tantalizing prospect, however, could not improve the all-out feeding frenzy of the next several days. The gossip sites were suddenly teeming with the purported dish on Princess Emma's new love, coming from "sources" who had either never met Killian in their lives, or had walked past him once on the street and now considered themselves the eminent authority. Most of them seemed to unite on the theme that they couldn't imagine what Emma saw in him, apart from a pretty face, and that nobody should start camping out at Westminster for a royal wedding any time soon. Either that or he was a gold digger, or just useless, or actually a terrible person. Rode on the coattails of his brother the national hero, was lucky enough to catch the princess' eye, and was now milking it for all it was worth, just like Neal Cassidy. The lunatic fringe figured he was probably a rapist.

It incensed Emma to see Killian slagged by the dregs of internet comment sections across the world, and she quickly had to stop reading it for the sake of her own sanity. He still had not yet called her back, and it was hard not to see in that a grim confirmation of Liam's pessimistic prophecy. Or was it just because he didn't know anything about relationships, or was just too busy hiding from the paparazzi to think of it? God, if any of them had done _anything_ to him…

By the time the New Year had passed and it was time for Emma to return to work, she just wanted an answer, some kind of answer, any answer. Her car was tailed by photographers all the way to the Library, and they then attempted to follow her inside, but were shut down in no uncertain terms by security. Her heart was in her throat as she sped up to the RBM, wondering what she would do if he wasn't there – or worse, if he was but wanted nothing to do with her. She didn't want to just quit, but if it was impossible to work together in these circumstances –

At that moment, all of her increasingly frantic contingency plans were interrupted as she burst through the door and glanced around. No Killian. Nothing but a big pile of boxes and scatters of papers, and she turned to the curator, trying to swallow down panic. "Where – where is he? Has he been in today? I – I just hoped to – "

"He was in yesterday. I can't think why he wouldn't be today?"

 _Except for the fact that I was coming in today._ Emma felt as if she'd been punched. "No," she said faintly. "No…"

"Yeah, sorry about the mess," a voice said from the gallery overhead. "I really needed to find a book from the Heller boxes, and I'm usually a bit neater."

Emma's head jerked up. She stared for a long moment, then darted for the stairs, vaulted up them three at a time, and ran straight to Killian, hugging him hard enough that she knocked them backwards into the shelves. "Are you all right? They didn't kill you with that nonsense, did they?"

"I'm all right." He managed a smile, but his eyes held a question. "It's a pain, aye, but… it's worth it. I – I had to see you again, Princess."

Emma's insides gave a half-pleased, half-apprehensive flutter. "Killian, I … I just wanted to thank you for putting up with that. I know it hasn't been easy. We'll try to work out something so it's not always like that, I promise."

"Well, we should," Killian said seriously. "I'm dealing with it, but it's not good for Liam. It's… setting him off, and you know what happens after that."

Emma winced. None of them talked very much about the tragedy that had ended Liam's career in the Royal Navy and relegated him to working as her bodyguard, since he bitterly blamed himself for not being able to save all of his crew and hated being labeled as a hero for it; he'd nearly outright rejected the Order of the British Empire that her mother had pinned on his chest at a special ceremony in Buckingham Palace, but the Admiralty brass had quietly forbidden him from doing so. He was on medication and still had biweekly therapy sessions, and he was such a stubborn and self-contained man that it was impossible to tell if he was suffering unless it was absolutely out of control, but the PTSD had definitely had its way with him, corroded him, buckled him, brutalized him, and it was no wonder that this relentless media bombardment was affecting him much worse than his supposedly frail, cowardly little brother. He hadn't yet returned to work, using some of his stored-up vacation time, and Emma supposed he was hoping that the storm would blow over first. It went against her instincts to announce or confirm or publicize anything, but it might be the only way to take some of the heat off.

"All right," she said, and steeled herself. "Are you – willing to stick this out?"

Killian looked as if she had just asked if he was willing to keep his own head. "Of course."

Emma tried to disguise her shuddering breath of relief. "Well then. Let's – let's do this."

* * *

The very next day, Clarence House issued a terse statement confirming that HRH The Princess of Wales was seeing Mr Killian Jones, that it was early days yet, and when or if there was anything further to know, the public would be duly informed. In exchange for the release of a few candid photos, the Palace hoped that the young couple would be afforded their privacy and that the relationship would be allowed to proceed without constant intrusions. It was also made clear that this was a threat with teeth: one-time offenders would be warned, but repeat offenders would have their credentials for the royal press pool revoked, meaning that they would no longer have permission to cover official events and photo calls.

However, if Emma had hoped that this calculated capitulation would take the heat off altogether, she was very wrong. Some of the localized chaos did die down, but Zelena Mills, the head of entertainment at Sky News, had taken a particular interest in them; Emma swore she had flying monkeys, given how reliably her minions showed up wherever Emma and Killian were trying to have a quiet date. Whatever little Zelena did not cover in lurid detail, Gold was there to pick up the slack, and he had gleefully taken the opportunity to give a platform to all the conspiracy theorists who swore they had the "truth" on what had happened with Liam's tragedy. Thus the whole sordid affair was dredged up and dragged through the court of public opinion mud again, and it was now the beginning of February and Emma still hadn't seen him. She had finally established herself at Clarence House, away from Buckingham, and while she and Killian were both comfortable and increasingly physical with each other, they had not yet slept together. Killian hadn't even spent the night; he always wanted to go home and make sure Liam was all right, and Emma certainly did not think it was her place to dissuade him. It was amazing they were managing to have a relationship at all, what with everything hanging over it.

Nonetheless, so it was. Today was Valentine's Day, their first as a couple, and Killian had promised that he would do something special for her. Emma had gotten dolled up in a pink dress and heels, pulled her hair into a bouffant ponytail, and was pacing back and forth in the parlor, waiting for him to ring and let her know that he was there. He was supposed to pick her up at 6:30pm, and it was now 6:52 – late enough for the normally quite reliably punctual Killian to make her wonder. Probably just traffic. London was even more of a zoo than usual tonight.

Yet as it edged past 7:00, Emma began to get antsy. She pulled out her phone, intending to call and be sure that they were still on – after everything, she didn't think he had chosen tonight to callously stand her up. Perhaps something had come up last-minute. But as she looked down at the screen, a text flashed through, and as it impressed itself upon her, she felt her chest seize up as if someone had thrust their hand in and gripped her heart.

 _I'm so sorry,_ said the first message.

And the second, _There's been an accident._


	5. Chapter 5

The car pulled up at the back entrance of St. Mary's Hospital, in hopes of avoiding the swarm of news vans already parked out front, and Emma opened the door and stepped out almost before it had stopped moving, pulling up her parka hood as a defense both against the cold February mist and any potential paparazzi ambushes. She powered up the steps, heels clicking on the damp cement; she was still in her date outfit, having taken no time to change after hearing the news. Her heart was in her mouth as she checked in at the nurses' station and was given an escort upstairs, down the hall to a private room hung with black curtains and guarded by a pair of uniformed Metropolitan Police officers. Upon seeing her, they smartly sprang aside, and she pushed through, failing utterly at not letting her terror show. "Killian? _Killian!"_

There was a faint rustling and murmur from the far side of the curtains, and she shoved them aside to behold her bruised and battered boyfriend. He had a nasty gash above his eye, as well as scrapes on his chin and neck, and his left arm was swathed in bandages, propped up on a stack of pillows. He was still in his suit, though it was soot-and-bloodstained, the jacket missing and the sleeve of the shirt ripped off, and upon seeing her in her pink dress, smiled shyly. "You – you look stunning, Emma."

She had to bite her lip; even after two months of dating, he rarely called her by her actual name, still preferring "Princess" or on unguarded occasions, "love." But she crossed the room in a stride, crouching by the hospital bed and reaching for his good hand, their cold fingers clasping tightly. "Killian… oh God, Killian, are you all right?"

"Think so." He did his best to give her a reassuring smile. "My arm's smashed up a bit, let's hope they don't have to lop it off, eh? But other than that, I think I'm mostly intact. I'm sorry about ruining our date."

"Shut up," Emma said fiercely. "I don't care about the date. Only about you and…" She hesitated. "Liam?"

Killian's fragile smile faltered. "I don't know. They rushed him into surgery as soon as we got here. I… I'm not sure."

Emma had to close her eyes hard, ordering herself that under no circumstances was she going to break down now, and drew a deep breath. "What happened?"

"He was driving me to the flower shop to get a rose for you." Killian's lips trembled. "Someone must have seen us, tipped off the paps… they appeared out of nowhere and jammed us in on all sides. Liam was trying to get us out of there, he was going bloody mental, and we raced to the end of the block and… and got hit head-on by a speeding rubbish lorry. Liam shielded me. He… he got the worst of it."

Emma felt as if her stomach had turned to ice. No way to tell if these particular photographers had been working for Gold or Zelena, but it didn't matter now. Pictures of Liam's crumpled Citroen would probably be all over their respective media outlets tomorrow morning anyway. She briefly thought she was going to throw up, and swallowed repeatedly until the feeling passed. "I'm going to find out who this was, Killian. I'm going to find out, and I'm going to make them pay."

He just looked back at her with those puppy eyes, and she realized all at once that he did not care a whit about revenge just now, about whoever had been responsible. All he cared about was the fact that his big brother's life hung in the balance, and that if his relationship with Emma, of which Liam had disapproved, was going to be the thing that took Liam away from him, he might never forgive himself. For that matter, Emma didn't know if she could either, and just then she wished that she could have been a princess in an age when that meant something – could have Gold shut up in the Tower of London, drive a dagger through his heart. Something, anything to make him pay for this. Instead, all she could do was issue a strongly worded statement and see how many of the heads of his media hydra they could stonewall or shut out. He could forget about being invited to any more state dinners for the rich and powerful elite of the UK, and the same went for Zelena.

And yet, none of that would matter if Liam died. Nothing could bring that back, could ever make it right. She would trade anything in her life – the money, position, fame, privileges, anything at all – if it saved him. But she knew she couldn't, and so it seemed the most massively futile thing of all, to have it and know that ultimately it did not make any difference if she was a princess or a pauper. She still could not hold onto what mattered most. Could not save them. Could barely even, now, save herself.

* * *

Emma and Killian spent a tense, sleepless, painful night curled together on his hospital bed, her careful not to jostle his bad arm or his IV drip, checked in periodically by the nurses. Liam was still alive, but it was touch and go, and when they came to take Emma and Killian to the surgery waiting room, they knew it was grim. They sat on the hard sofa, holding hands, listening to the clock tick, Killian's lips moving over and over in silent prayer.

At last when the surgeon came out, Emma briefly thought both of them were about to faint, could not possibly face this, live in a world where this was so. But the surgeon told them instead that Liam had made it through the worst part, and was now resting more or less comfortably. He wasn't very lucid or responsive, but if they wanted to see him now, they could.

Emma and Killian sprang to their feet and assured the surgeon that they very much did. So with Emma supporting most of Killian's weight, as his ankle had been badly twisted, they shuffled and hopped back to the private room, and steeled themselves. Then after a moment, they went in.

Liam looked nothing like himself, hooked up to a bewildering array of tubes, machines, monitors, and feeds, covered in a sterile white drape that left only his face visible. One eye was swollen shut, and they had buzzed off his mop of brown curls, a jagged line of black stitching marching like inky birds' feet along the curve of his bare skull. The green blips on the screens seemed horrifyingly slow and far apart, but somehow they kept going. And at the sound of their entrance, his good eye cracked just enough to show a slit of blue. "K…. Kil?"

"It's me, Li," Killian squeaked, voice not steady in the least. "Me and Emma."

Liam's eye moved to take her in, and she winced; she was not at all sure what his reaction would be, or if she should put too much stock in anything he said or did in this drugged-up haze. But then he sighed, "Pr… Princess," mumbled and indistinct through the ventilator. "M… mis… missed you."

Emma bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. "I… I missed you too," she whispered, fingers aching with the need to give him some kind of comforting touch, but she was terrified to disturb any part of the formidable mechanical jungle keeping him alive. "We – both of us – we can't live without you, Liam. Pl… please." Her voice cracked as well, and a silent tear rolled down her cheek. "Come back to us."

Something like his old wry smile pulled at the corner of Liam's mouth, and it broke both their hearts to see it. "Not… off the hook," he murmured. "Still… don't…. approve."

And with that, his head fell back on the pillow. His eyes fluttered shut. And he fell, completely and resoundingly, asleep.

* * *

The next several days were an absolute circus. Public opinion had turned sharply against Gold, Zelena, and their relentless hunting of Emma and Killian once the bombshell of the accident dropped, and several important Government ministers and MPs promised to introduce and sponsor new laws against predatory paparazzi as soon as the new session of Parliament started. Killian and Liam were practically buried in a deluge of flowers, cards, teddy bears, and other tokens sent by well-wishers (along with a few dozen marriage proposals apiece). Emma spent almost all her time at the hospital with them, as Killian wouldn't leave even though now that they had set and cast his broken arm, he probably could have. Either he or Emma was always with Liam, who had had a setback and spent forty-eight very scary hours hanging by a thread. But once more, he pulled through. If the Jones brothers were too stubborn to live, they were evidently also too stubborn to die.

As for Emma's part, the royal family was pulling together remarkably well. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh made a private visit to the hospital a few days later, and Prince David, who had clearly been prepared to loathe Killian on sight, instead discovered that they had a remarkable amount in common; indeed, a one true bromance appeared to be in the fledgling stages. Ruby sent flowers and chocolates, and while Regina was not to be seen deigning to take part in this touchy-feely nonsense, several of Gold's most valuable shareholdings suddenly suffered a mysterious and costly nosedive, and Zelena had to take time off the air with a "personal issue" rumored to be a rather nasty skin disease that required her to keep her face covered in bright green medicinal cream. Whether her step-grandmother had somehow had something to do with this, or if it was just a particularly gratifying case of instant-action karma, Emma decided not to ask.

Even when it seemed fairly certain that Liam was going to physically survive, however, she and Killian were still worried about his mind. Putting a psychologically damaged ex-Navy officer through a second life-threatening situation, which had come about as the result of something he had expressly tried to prohibit, was not exactly the recipe for sunshine-and-rainbows mental health. He hadn't been able to take his usual anti-depressants because they would screw with the approximately thirty-three other kinds of medication he was currently on, and as a result, he had almost normal days and then completely terrible ones. As well, nothing worked as he was accustomed to it doing, meaning that any likelihood of returning to bodyguard duties had been reduced to essentially zero. He was not going to take the prospect of sitting around as a cripple and doing nothing very well either. At these times, a few crashed stock portfolios and hideous skin complaints did not feel like nearly sufficient vengeance to Emma, and she had to struggle against the dark feelings it brought out in her as well. Not in the same way, as she wasn't the one who had actually lived through it, but strong and dangerous nonetheless.

It was almost Easter by the time Liam was finally released from hospital – a long London spring evening, green and gold and lovely, as he walked slowly out under the portico, leaning on a cane and Killian's arm. A car was waiting for them, and Emma helped him into it; Liam had lost so much weight that his usually tall, burly frame had been reduced to a shadow and a wraith of itself. He settled into the seat with a pained grimace, but, being Liam, didn't complain. "You two need to have your date," he said after a moment, eyes closed. "The one you were supposed to have on Valentine's Day. You never got the chance."

"We've had a good reason, Li," Killian said solicitously, helping his brother wrangle the seatbelt. "And… and wait, was that you actually saying you approve?"

Liam opened one eye to give him a wry, weary smile. "Be a bit rich of me to say no now, wouldn't it? You… you're a brave man, Killian. For so long, I've seen you as a boy, a child, my baby who I had to protect, convinced that all of this would break you… but instead it broke me, and you were the one who held both of us up. I was selfish in the first place. Trying to keep you apart. I'm sorry."

Killian opened and shut his mouth, completely dumbstruck, eyes glittering suspiciously bright. Then without a word, he leaned over and hugged Liam violently, and the two of them did not let go even as the car started up and rolled out from the hospital rotunda, Killian's head buried in Liam's shoulder and Liam's chin resting on his little brother's tousled dark hair. He patted Killian's back, opened his mouth and likewise found nothing to say, making a sort of broken crooning noise under his breath, as he must have done in the nights when he, nothing more than a child himself, had to soothe the baby back to sleep. It made Emma's heart hurt to watch them, feel too large and fragile for her chest. Like a coin someone had flicked with a thumb, spinning and spinning, flashing in the light, fearing to fall.

And yet, at last, she did.

* * *

When they had dropped Liam off at the Jones brothers' flat in Stroud Green, and made him promise to ring at once if he needed anything whatsoever, they were chauffeured back to Clarence House, got out of the car, and headed inside. The maids had cleaned and gone grocery shopping, and everything looked almost artificially perfect, gleaming starkly, spic and span. After the starched, sterile confines of the hospital, it made Emma uncomfortable, and the first thing she and Killian did was to go around knocking the books askew on the shelves, throwing things on the floor, jumping on the couch cushions, and going upstairs to drag the quilt off the bed and spread it on the living room floor. The late evening light bathed them in rich rose colors through the open windows, the sound of London traffic muted and faraway as if from underwater, as they went to the kitchen, raided the space-age refrigerator, and carried all the food back to eat on the quilt in an impromptu indoor picnic. It was as far from staged and planned and perfect as could be imagined, and Emma felt so happy that she could almost cry.

At last, as they had licked up the last crumbs and pushed the packages aside, they stretched out side by side and quietly held hands. Then after that, touched foreheads, and then began to kiss, slow and considered and almost dreamy, savoring each breath, each instant, each small space and spark and fraction of being together, with each other. Their hands began to move, to wander, to caress and tease, and while Killian was somewhat awkward just by virtue of not knowing very well what he was doing, he was not shy at all. They knew they were meant to be here. To do this. To live.

Emma rolled onto her back, pulling him on top of her, as his hands began to carefully undo the buttons of her blouse. Her hair spilled in a shining halo around her head, her hands moved to cup his face, guide his mouth to the hollow between her breasts, and then lower, and lower still. Then she arched her back and made an incoherent noise, and he steadied her with a hand on her hip, opening her to him.

Still, even caught in the inexorable tides drawing them close, they moved slowly. When he shifted over her, hitching a knee up on her hip, and she reached for him, to guide him, the spell did not break. Until at last he came to her, into her, and her head fell back, mouth open, breathing in short shallow gasps, easing him home. Rocking them together to perfect the fit, legs locking around his ankles, flushed and fervent and ready, desperate to be kissed. Lifting her mouth to his, tasting him as he – no, not as he took her, that could not be said, for he still barely had a clue what he was doing (though he was learning fast). As they gave themselves utterly to each other, unmade the last boundaries between flesh and soul and spirit, knitting themselves from two to one, in soft wet sounds and gasps and whimpers, hands pawing blindly at each other, mouths still locking, breathing each other's breath. Beating each other's heart.

Each broken, jagged piece in each of them found its mate, and there were no more empty places. They bent, they broke, they burned, they ended. And yet at last, they began again.

Outside, the ships put down anchor. The stars came out. And there was no breath, no wind, but for the one that blew him home to her.


	6. Chapter 6

**vi.**

It was getting onto summer, and that meant it was time to finalize plans for Emma's first solo overseas tour, which was shaping up to be also possibly her last due to the amount of stress it was causing her. The major countries like Australia, Canada, and New Zealand all thought they were entitled to their _own_ visit, nobody could decide whether Tuvalu, with its 0.01% of the Commonwealth population, should be included at all, and the publishers of the Court Circular had sent several rather peeved messages asking (in strict protocol, of course) whether they were going to be able to distribute HRH's itinerary in time for the rapidly approaching trip. That was a good question, but it was finally decided that Emma would visit the Caribbean countries (Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines) in quick succession, spending a few days on each and pressing flesh with the Governor-General and other dignitaries, getting a sample of local cuisine and culture, and being allowed to say a few public words for nearly the first time in her closely scripted and guarded existence. After which, she would be whisked north to Canada in time for Canada Day festivities, visit Parliament in Ottawa and meet the Prime Minister, and ride the Rocky Mountain Express out to the western provinces to see the Canadian Rockies. Then after returning home to Britain and having six weeks or so to catch her breath, she would depart for Oceania: Australia, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Tuvalu, which had evidently made the cut. This would allow her to get there just as summer was ending in the Northern Hemisphere and starting in the South, and make sure that nobody was left out, as well as dividing the burden of travel into two parts.

It was still a formidable prospect, however, and meant that Emma would have to officially take an indefinite leave of absence from the Library, which she was quite sad about. As well, there was no way she wanted to do this by herself, no matter what the actual rules were, and as such, had already asked Killian to come with her. He had cautioned that he probably couldn't swing both trips, but he had managed to get the Library to approve the first leg due to the fact that he was going to visit every island history bureau in hopes of doing some _in situ_ research on his current pet project: the development of Caribbean piracy and the influence of the Royal Navy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. "After all," he said sheepishly. "If my brother is the youngest captain in modern history, I really should know more about it."

Emma supposed this was a perfect compromise to take him along and start to expose him to the demands of royal life (though he had been dealing with the media circus just fine) while she did her job and he was happily holed up in some document archive somewhere. And she did want it to work out, more than anything. She was having an increasingly hard time imagining her life as queen without Killian. Or life in general.

The only thing both of them were uneasy about was leaving Liam. He had physical therapy and psychiatric counseling sessions that came to him at home, so he didn't have to struggle with the difficulties of getting out and about and possibly being photographed; he had come to have an aversion to them as strong as his dislike for any reminders of his first tragedy. He was more or less his old self with Killian and Emma, but he was far more frail than either of them were used to, and things could go downhill quickly. While he had given his approval to their relationship, and indeed liked to tease them about it with flashes of his old wit, it was a fact that if it continued as seriously as it had begun, the media attention was something he would have to deal with for the rest of his life. They could move him to Highgrove House in Gloucestershire, or another of the Princess of Wales' more out-of-the-way properties away from the scalding spotlight of London, but that also meant they would see him much less often, and sometimes it seemed that they were the only things keeping him sane.

Nonetheless, Liam urged them to go and not worry about an old derelict like him, even though he did not think that Emma's new bodyguard – a female Scottish special-ops martial arts champion named Merida – was entirely up to snuff. Once the news that Killian was accompanying the princess on her grand tour had gotten out, William Hill and Ladbrokes and the other bookies started taking bets on the likelihood of a royal engagement, and various people felt eminently qualified to offer their opinion on whether Emma would really marry a man she had known for less than a year, who still seemed so (cue horrified socialite gasp) _unsuitable_. August Booth, a hack novelist who ran a wildly popular gossip blog, SecretsAugustKnows.com (or as it was often called, ShitAugustSays.com) seemed especially convinced that it would be a terrible decision, and had developed an irritating habit of writing open letters to Emma as if they were friends, trying to urge her to embrace her destiny and, apparently, view the man she loved as expendable. One could not be sure if it was related to trying to whip up publicity for his new book, a noir retelling of the Pinocchio story featuring Pinocchio as a scruffy bad boy addicted to sex, drugs, and poor decisions while trying to repair his relationship with his estranged father (of _course_ he had daddy issues) but the answer was probably.

The last few days whirled by in a blur, and at last it was time. Emma had successfully convinced her parents to let her fly commercial this time, and she and Killian were booked first class on a British Airways flight to Nassau. There was quite a bit more luggage than in her getaway to Switzerland, as she would be considered to have committed a _faux pas_ if she wore the same thing twice in a three-week trip (heaven forbid). Killian, by contrast, still had only his battered duffel bag. As he would be safely squirreled away, nobody cared what he was wearing.

The flight was long, even in first class, and they were both considerably jetlagged when they landed; going west across the Atlantic was a bruiser. But once they recovered and she could do things instead of merely worrying about them, matters greatly improved. Emma received a vastly warm welcome on each of the islands, and Killian was just as delighted to be tunneling into stacks of old paper and fragile colonial-era records, taking approximately a full notebook's worth of notes per day. Furthermore the weather was actually perfect, instead of the muggy hell or swarms of mosquitoes (or worse, hurricanes) that could often bedevil the Caribbean during summer, and as they were lying on a St. Lucia beach on a long, red-and-gold evening with the waving palm trees casting shadows, she said, "Do you think you could… live like this?"

"Like this?" Killian glanced appreciatively around at their surroundings. "Who couldn't?"

"That's not what I meant." Emma slapped lightly at him, and he caught her hand and pulled her on top of him, nuzzling in for a kiss that tasted like salt, sand, and Mai Tais. When she had slid herself down to a more comfortable position on his chest, she said, "I meant… like _this_. Me doing this every day, and you… do you think eventually you would want to?"

"What's this about, love?" Killian stroked her damp, wildly curling blonde locks out of her face. "Of course I don't mind you being a princess! It's what you were born to do, eh? As long as you work on finding out what kind of person you want to be, so well as what kind of queen. The two things aren't the same, you know."

"I know." Emma let out a slow breath, putting her head back down against his chest so she could hear his heart. For some reason, it always comforted her. "Just… if we were, you know… to have any kind of… future, you couldn't just hide in the library all the time, or they'd…"

"Love." Killian gripped her by the arms, propping her upright to look into each other's eyes. "I am willing to do absolutely anything for you, all right? I'd follow you to the end of the world, or time. If it means putting on a suit and going out to deal with the madding crowd on occasion, so be it. Liam already learned I'm stronger than I look. I don't want you thinking about how you might lose me, eh? I'm not leaving. I'm in this for the long haul."

Emma let out another breath, this one far more unsteady, and dipped her head down for another kiss, long and slow, musing and sweet. They lay there in the shadows of the palms, listening to the sea whisper, as if they were the only two people in all of eternity, and indeed she could believe it so, that nothing would ever reach them. That nothing would ever again be wrong.

Until, late that night, the call came.

* * *

"I have to go." Killian's hands were shaking. "I have to go back, I have to be with him. I – I have to. Oh God, bloody hell. Emma, love, please understand. I have to."

"I understand," Emma said by reflex, barely hearing herself speak. "You know I can't – I have to finish the tour – I have to do my duty, the princess doesn't get a day off, but – "

"You can't come back for this, love? Even when we were talking about what sort of person you wanted to make, as well as a queen? They'd understand. How you're supposed to give it your all when you know this, I don't – "

"I have to," Emma said miserably. "This has been in the works for so long, I can't overturn it now. My life isn't just mine, Killian. I have to think about everyone else, I can't be selfish, I can't – "

"Coming back with me for the sake of a man we both love is selfish?" He looked at her as if he had never seen her before. "Emma. Why are you running away from this? From your family? From me?"

She couldn't answer. A great, strangling fist had closed itself around her chest, reminding her of the fear, the darkness. That she couldn't speak, she couldn't believe, she couldn't trust that the two of them could really make it work. All she could hear was a roaring in her ears. "I can't. I'm the princess, Killian. _The princess._ I have to do my duty."

He looked at her for a long moment. "Yes," he said at last. "I see that. Well then. When you get back, you'll know where to find us."

And with that, he got up. Crossed the room, and let himself out. The door shut without a sound behind him.

* * *

Killian Bartholomew Jones had never considered himself a particularly brave or outstanding or special person. He was good at books and reading and learning languages and staying out of sight, but never at the great and terrible complexities of life. He had always had Liam there to look after him, shield him from everything that should by rights have dropped and shattered him like a dish on the floor, and now, he might not. Panicked excuses and rationalizations whirled like Dorothy's tornado in his head. Should never have left. Should never have stayed. Should never have gone. Should never have even tried. What was he thinking, a princess and a bloke like him?

And yet. And yet. He meant it, what he had said to her. Did not have it in him to lie, especially not about that. Not to her. Yet at the hour of need, when it had been thrown back in his face…

He barely closed an eye on the emergency midnight flight back to London, felt like he was living in a different world altogether. Got the cab back to St. Mary's, cursed himself for thinking they could actually be done with this place, that they could escape the damage, that they could escape the cost. His fault, his. If he had never pursued this mad dream with the Princess in the first place… but now, even the worst of all, even knowing everything, he could not and would not make himself stop.

He headed inside and got the report from the nurse. Damn his bloody brother, of course he had planned even his own suicide attempt with exacting care. Liam had cut both arms with a scalpel laced with a street drug known as "dreamshade"; in small quantities, it was supposed to give you crazily detailed psychedelic hallucinations, like acid but better. In larger ones, you never dreamed anything again. That way Liam could be sure that if the cuts didn't do their work, the poison would. All because he was so bloody stubborn, because he had been so shattered, because he couldn't see a way out of the darkness and thought he could just kill himself while they were gone and they would never notice, never get to say goodbye… or else he hadn't meant to at all, had tried to fight his way out, but eventually the weight was just too much and he gave into a fatal moment of weakness. Or what might yet be fatal. Their neighbor had found him and called 999, and he was still alive, again, when they brought him here.

Killian stepped into Liam's room, and closed the door behind him. He felt three hundred years old, barely human, struggling through darkness like tar. Moved to sit at his brother's bedside, take one of his hands, curl it around both of his own. The cuts had been closed and bandaged, but the dreamshade was still raging through his veins. It was only a matter of waiting. Of seeing if the poison overcame his weakened body and did what it had been intended to, or if it was not quite enough. If he'd be strong enough, one last time.

Killian paused a moment longer. He wondered if it was hospital protocol, then decided he didn't give a damn if it wasn't. He kicked off his shoes, crawled up onto the bed, and curled up against Liam's side, as he had when they were children, when he had had a bad dream. He'd always wanted Liam's strength then, Liam's presence. But he had to be the one to give it now. Had told Emma he was stronger than he looked, had learned it for a fact.

Everything he'd been called, and worse. Everything he had known for truth, which made it harder to deny. How he had lived his life skittishly with his head down and his guard up. Running away. Running like Emma. And perhaps, after all, he knew why.

The coward. The frail bookworm. The failure. The useless deadweight. The gold-digger who only wanted the princess for her money and position. The lost boy.

The brave, brave man.

Killian leaned his face into Liam's shoulder, and closed his eyes. Breathed in, breathed for both of them. Held tight.

Held on.

* * *

He must have fallen asleep, he had no idea how long, because he was startled out of an (ironically) dreamless sleep by the sound of the door opening.

It wasn't a nurse, which was his first thought. It wasn't some exceptionally unscrupulous journalist, which was his second. No. As she shut the door again and turned around, hair coming down in thick, loose waves, eyes red, his heart was nearly the one to stop instead.

"I'm sorry," Emma said, her voice sounding thin and fragile, barely above a whisper. She bit her lip, fighting tears. "You were right. I had to choose what kind of person I wanted to be, as well as what kind of queen, and I… I made the wrong decision. I was scared, and I ran. I did exactly what August Booth thought I would, and that… that's not who I want to be. Killian… please forgive me, I don't – "

She wasn't allowed to finish, as Killian rolled off the bed, crossed the room in two strides, and snatched her into his arms, holding her tight as both of them silently shook. When at last either of them could form some semblance of coherent words, he croaked, "There's nothing to forgive, Emma."

They stood there, looking into each other's eyes, clutching tight to each other's arms as if they feared to fall otherwise. Nothing but silence, and the sound of grief and catharsis, years in the making, years held back, for both of them. Until it expanded, became larger and larger, and then from the bed, a faint voice said, "What in _blazes_ are you two doing here?"

Killian and Emma spun around. They stared. Killian swore. Then he said, "You son of a _bitch_ , I am _never_ forgiving you," and began to sob.

* * *

The rest of the royal tour was called off, Canada promised that they would receive an extra-special solo visit just as they had wanted, and the Oceania segment pushed back to later in the winter. When Liam was well enough to travel, Emma took him and Killian, on invitation by Elsa, up to Norway, to spend the rest of the summer out of the toxic spotlight of London. They bunked down in a cabin so remote that it took an hour by four-wheel drive to get there, with stunning views of mountains and fjords and glacial lakes, nearly twenty-four-hour daylight, and not a photographer or meddling member of the public in sight – nobody except them. As such, Liam seemed to breathe again for the first time in months, taking long walks by himself and returning late, and finally starting to lose some of the sickly pallor and inward, hunted look he had worn even before the car accident. He still didn't talk very much, but he was visibly steadier on his feet, even as the black scars of the dreamshade remained etched starkly on his arms. At first Emma and Killian kept a sharp eye on him, but as it transpired that he was slowly and strangely and clumsily healing, they realized that the best thing they could do was to interfere as little as possible, just letting him know that they were there if he needed, and then stepping back.

Once she had finished her own summer of official engagements in Oslo, Elsa came up to visit them. The Norwegian royal family, while they certainly were figures of public interest, were not obsessively hunted and reported on like the Brits, and so nobody came up trying to disturb them even with her around. She knew what had happened, but didn't bring it up or push. Until at last she went outside one long polar-summer evening, the blue light still vibrant in the sky at eleven P.M., and sat quietly next to Liam on the porch swing, the two of them rocking in abstracted but comfortable silence. Then at last she said softly, "Do you want to talk?"

Liam glanced at her in surprise. "Talk, Your Highness?"

"Please," she said. "Call me Elsa."

"Elsa." He looked down at his feet. "I – I'm sure you mean well, but I… I don't know how much of it you could relate to. Feeling like you're hiding all the time, away from the younger sibling you love more than anything in the world but don't want to hurt, holding yourself in, until finally you just… you just break. You want to be away from everything, shut yourself in and never come out, and make it stop. You don't want to die, but you're so bone-tired of living. Your mistakes, your guilt, they… haunt you. Always. And – "

Elsa reached out and took his hand.

Liam blinked. "Your – Elsa?"

"I think I understand you perfectly," she said quietly. "Every word."

* * *

On the other side of the house, Killian and Emma were also sitting, holding hands and looking out at the wilderness, the quiet, the space beyond. The future, no matter how strange and impossible it had seemed that they would ever reach it, much less together. The sun had sunk below the jagged fringe of the mountains, but the glow still shone down on them, turning the sky into a luminous cauldron of light. They could see a solitary hawk riding the updrafts, wheeling and turning, as the white eggshell of the moon climbed among the stars. It felt like that night at Clarence House when they'd first made love, let go and leaped, even though there was, of course, more darkness and struggle to come. There might again be now, but Emma knew beyond all doubt it did not, could not, would not ever matter to her again. She had to do it. She had to make it real.

"Killian," she said, her fingers ghosting light patterns over the back of his hand.

He turned to look at her. "Aye?"

"I." Emma took a deep, shaking breath. _Choose who you want to be._ "Killian. I had to tell you. Just – just in case. Now. I…"

He leaned forward, their foreheads touching, their fingers linking, their boundaries melding. She pulled his hand over her heart, looked him in the eye, and said, "I love you."

For a moment he didn't react at all, as if he was too stunned, too scared, too unwilling to trust. Just like her. Just like her. But he, too, had to choose who he wanted to be, and who he was, and who they had become, both of them, together. And so he covered their clasped hands with his free one, pulled it back to his own heart, and whispered, "I know."


	7. Epilogue

As the black Rolls-Royce purred to a halt and the noise of the crowd sounded strangely distant, almost underwater, Emma took a deep breath, cramming her heart and stomach back into place and shooting a glance at her father for support. Decked out in tuxedo and tails, white silk vest and watch chain, a boutonniere pinned to his lapel and a top hat sitting carefully on the seat between them so as not to be crushed, Prince David looked almost as nervous as his daughter, but as she presented herself for one final last-second check, his expression lightened into a helpless, wondering smile. "You are so beautiful, sweetheart," he said hoarsely. "Just so beautiful."

Considering the amount of time, effort, fittings, trials, and tears that had gone into making this, Emma certainly damn well hoped so. The sculpted lace bodice, the full satin skirt, the tiara and the jewelry and the sixteen-foot-long veil, the sheer sleeves and the hand-beaded pumps, the bouquet of lily and baby's breath and snowdrops. She knew each part of it by heart, but made sure it was in place nonetheless, having a sudden memory of her entrance down the staircase that night at the benefit gala which had started it all. However anxious she had been then, she was a hundred times more so now – and yet, had never been so certain, so deeply and utterly ready.

"All right," she said, and sucked in another breath for good measure. Smiled a bit unsteadily, determined not to ruin her makeup. "Let's do this."

David gestured to the waiting footmen, who opened the car doors, and there was a communal roar from the crowd outside the Abbey as Emma emerged, thousands of phone screens flashing and snapping. Britain had been in Royal Wedding fervor for weeks; the diehards had staked out their places days in advance, and were brandishing Union Jacks, posters with Emma and Killian's faces on them, glitter-glue crowns, and basically every kind of useless commemorative tat the country's souvenir mills had been cranking out: porcelain plates, collectible coins, custom Barbie dolls, window decals, keychains, T-shirts, and more. If you were skint broke but just had to have something to mark the occasion, there were 99p sticker sheets and £1.99 paper masks of the royal bride and groom. These were his last few minutes as Mr Killian Jones, private citizen; henceforward he would officially be styled _His Royal Highness_ The Duke of Cornwall. "Prince of Wales" was technically among his new titles, but as he would be only the spouse of the heir presumptive and not it himself, he would not use it in public.

Emma pivoted on the spot, waving, as cameras kept flashing. Then she took her father's arm as he stepped up, top hat now in place, and they assembled with the procession as Elsa, her maid of honor, took command of her veil and train – all of them waiting for the moment to make their stately entrance into Westminster. At last, as the organ swelled and the pages and flower girls (Henry and Roland's kids, along with Anna and Kristoff's three-year-old daughter) had filed in, it was time for her. She and David passed under the great twin Gothic spires and into the magnificent old church, stalls and seats packed with the usual roster of invitees to this kind of event: the royal family, representatives from other European monarchies, a few celebrities (J.K. Rowling, by request of both Emma and Killian, and David and Victoria Beckham) and musicians (Paul McCartney, Elton John) and the entire staff and special friends of the British Library.

There were certainly some outrageous hats among the crowd, but Emma barely paid attention to any of them. Her gaze was fixed on the altar, where the Archbishop of Canterbury sparkled in full splendid vesture, and where, back formally turned, Killian stood waiting, also in tuxedo and tails. Next to him, spotless in his Navy uniform, was Liam, and the sight of the two of them made Emma's heart skip a beat. Glancing over his shoulder, Liam saw her, grinned broadly, and turned to pass a sly aside to his brother. He also winked at Elsa, who doubtless dignifiedly pretended not to notice. They had been together for almost two years now, and this might not be the only royal wedding in the cards for the Jones brothers.

As Emma reached the altar, and Killian was finally allowed to turn and see her, the expression of sheer, dumbstruck awe and adoration on his face made tears spring to her eyes. They simply drank each other in, in a moment that doubtless caused the massive live TV audience to swoon and which would make it onto every single "Our Top 5 Favorite Things From The Royal Wedding" list. David let go of her arm and exchanged a small nod with Killian, then stepped back to take his place next to the Queen. Yet all the countless watching eyes and worldwide media and breathless news anchors did not matter a whit to Emma. It was just her, and him.

They knelt before the Archbishop, and the ceremony began. They had rehearsed half a hundred times, but the words felt different this time. Real. Emma's engagement ring had belonged to Killian's mother, but they both had had wedding bands made from special Welsh gold. Alexander, Henry's seven-year-old son, had been elected for this momentous task, and ran up with the pillow; they fit them onto each other's fingers, never taking their eyes off each other. In deference to stern Anglican protocol, there would not be a kiss in church, but when the Archbishop pronounced them husband and wife, they held onto each other's hands as if they were the only thing in the world, beaming through their tears.

After that, everything was more or less a big, joyous blur. Another roar from the crowd when they stepped out of the Abbey arm in arm and climbed into the horse-drawn carriage for the ride down the Mall, waving to the throngs packed a dozen deep behind the barricades and escorted by the Queen's Guard in full furry-hat splendor. They arrived at Buckingham, had formal portraits taken, and then went onto the balcony with the rest of the royal family for what everyone was waiting for: the kiss, as well as the RAF flyover. Emma waved until her wrist was sore, but she didn't care. Even Regina appeared to be having a great time, possibly secure in the knowledge that through nothing whatsoever to do with her, Robert Gold would not be getting a single one of the exclusive wedding and honeymoon pictures he had promised to splash everywhere, and for that matter, neither would Zelena. Emma and Killian considered it one of their best wedding gifts.

After this, they returned inside, and Emma changed into a more sexy and daring gown for the formal reception, hosted by her parents, as she and Killian stood by the door of the state ballroom, greeting all the guests. "You should spill a drink on me," she teased. "For old time's sake."

"Maybe later, love," he said with a grin. "Though that's far from the only thing I want to do to you in that dress."

Emma choked, but recovered to shake the Canadian Governor-General's hand with a bright smile. When everyone was inside, there were speeches and toasts the same as at any wedding, and Liam's left the entire room in tears. Cake was cut, although certainly not shoved in anyone's face, and there was schmoozing and dancing. Then at last, all the official guests left with large checks signed to charities in Emma and Killian's name, and the family and close friends were driven to Clarence House, where the real party started. There was a white tent on the lawn, a DJ and an open bar, and everyone danced until at least 2 AM, even Liam. But around midnight, Emma and Killian took their leave and headed inside, as he swept her off her feet and carried her upstairs to the bridal suite. They were leaving tomorrow for a week-long honeymoon in the Seychelles, but tonight, here, came first.

Killian stepped over the threshold, and put her down. Candlelight glowed, fresh roses had been placed around the room, and the silken sheets on the canopied bed were turned down. Someone, with almost 100% certainty Ruby, had left a champagne bucket of "goodies" of a decidedly adult nature, and they giggled. Kissed again, because they could barely make themselves stop, and then at last, Killian knelt down and slowly, carefully, reverently began to undress her. Loosened the garter with his teeth, kissing and nosing up her leg, and then doing the same to her lace panties as she gasped.

At last, as her dress fell in deep silken crumples around her feet, he explored every inch of her from collarbone, to breasts, and finally down to her still-flat stomach, with perhaps the barest, most imperceptible hint of roundness, their precious secret. "I love you," he breathed, over and over. "I love you. Both of you. So much. And I always, always will."

* * *

As it was, Princess Victoria Alice Helene of Wales helpfully arrived a week and a half past her due date, so while there were still plenty of obnoxious people counting backward to speculate on _when_ exactly she had been conceived, at least there was just enough time to confuse them somewhat. As was the case for modern royal babies, she was born in the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's Hospital, which Emma and Killian were thrilled to return to for a happier reason. They appeared outside to present their newborn daughter to the world; with Mary Margaret as Queen, Emma as Princess of Wales, and little Victoria as her eldest child, it marked the first time that Britain would have three generations of ruling queens. Also as royal babies did, Princess Victoria had several godparents: Liam and Elsa, Henry and his wife Grace, Anna, and Killian's friend Will Scarlet. Emma and Killian would be leaving London to move into Anmer Hall in Norfolk, a country house on the Sandringham estate, so they could focus on their private time as a family of three without interference. Emma had made it clear that her daughter, as well as any future royal babies, would be growing up as normally as possible, and that all intrusions by the paparazzi would be regarded very dimly indeed.

Yet that, now, was the furthest thing from her mind. After she was discharged, and Killian was driving them home at the speed of approximately two miles an hour observed by all new fathers, she looked through the windscreen of the car, at the lights of London coming on in the dusk. It was late March, the beginning of spring, and the trees were thick and green, the sky a bejeweled blue. And so, then, all she could do was breathe deep, and savor it, and know.

Her past, her present, her future. Her happily ever after.

All was made new again.

All was well.


	8. Chapter 8

_extra one-shot bit as a birthday present for peggyyswan. ;)_

* * *

**(ever after)**

Emma Charlotte Victoria Elizabeth Windsor – Her Royal Highness The Princess of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall, heiress to the throne of sixteen countries and eventual symbolic leader of thirty-seven more as head of the Commonwealth, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, etc. etc., whose face would one day decorate the most valuable currency in the world, the pound sterling – was currently having a terrible disagreement with the doors of a District Line service departing (or rather attempting to depart) from Cannon Street, and the doors were winning. It was doubtful whether the automated voice scolding her for delaying the departure of this train was aware that she was its future sovereign, but it was entirely better if it wasn't. Taking the Tube was the only way she was going to get to Westminster faster than walking, as half the streets in central London were blocked off or rerouted in anticipation of her mother's Silver Jubilee celebrations over the weekend (London, of course, being a place known for its wonderful traffic) and after six hours in four-inch heels, that was not an option. Emma had spent the day in organizational meetings for her new charitable foundation for at-risk young women, going over board members and bylaws and financial transparency regulations, which celebrities were interested in being honorary patrons and exactly how many fundraisers she was expected to attend a year, and she was practically seeing double. With her face hidden behind a pair of large sunglasses and her hair twisted in a messy knot, she looked no different than any other stressed businesswoman crowding onto the train at rush hour, and in fact would have made a clean getaway if not for the doors and their stringent objection to her purse, which was apparently crossing into the sacred perimeter zone that the London Underground's little mechanical brain knew was Just No Good. If there was six more inches of space, she'd have moved. Good grief.

Avoiding the censorious stares of her fellow commuters, Emma reorganized her offending accessory, squeezed in a little more cozily with the Rasta next to her, and allowed the doors to swish shut with an air of wounded superiority. The packed train rolled out of the station; fortunately, it was only a few stops down the river, as the fug of unwashed beatnik was overwhelming and she began to reconsider her willingness to mingle so readily with the hoi polloi. Certainly it was a habit that the rest of the Royal Family found bewildering, as rather dangerous. Even with a discreet security detail in tow (two large men a few poles down, one currently being used by a little old Chinese lady to hold up her shopping) what if something _happened?_ (Most likely they meant something worse than the purse incident.)

As a result, it was generally concluded that it was probably Killian's fault. As he not only still worked at the British Library but took public transit from Kensington every day, there were entire _People_ photo albums dedicated to "Modern Royal Prince Killian Rides The Train!," as if this was a noteworthy event for someone who had a nine-to-five job in a large city with a heavily relied-upon transit system. Plenty of opinion pieces had been written about how this showed that Killian wasn't letting fame and fortune get to his head, was still working even though he obviously would never have to worry about money in his life, and that a salt-of-the-earth London lad like him was just what the rest of the layabout bluebloods needed as an example. Others felt that this clearly meant he wasn't fitting in with their lifestyle (a "Royal Marriage in Crisis!" story appeared in the tabloids approximately every three months or so) was passive-aggressively rebelling against their strictures and silly rules, and this was all part of a secret cry for help. Killian himself, after being enlightened as to the ridiculous hullabaloo surrounding his travel habits, had looked at Emma in bewilderment and said, "I'm just trying to get to work, love."

She had grinned and told him that it was absolutely no concern to her; if he'd done anything else, started ordering door-to-door luxury limousine service every day, then she'd know something was really wrong. The rest of the constant echo chamber was simply irrelevant noise. They had been married for just over three years, and she still sometimes woke up before he did (although not often as he was a frankly depressing early bird) looked down at him, and couldn't believe she got to spend the rest of her life doing this. Their daughter, Princess Victoria, was two and a half, would be having her first major exposure to the public this weekend at her grandmother's Jubilee festivities, and the other favored obsession of the rumor mill was when Emma and Killian were going to have another baby. Ordinarily, she would have been expected both the heir and the spare in short order, but she and Killian were so happy with Vicky, and so busy with their projects and careers, that she hadn't felt the need to do it again just because fusty royal protocol said so. They definitely wanted at least one more child, but maybe not quite yet.

The overloaded Tube car rattled and wheezed into Westminster a few minutes later, and Emma gratefully escaped the blast zone of eau de hippie, jostling her way up the stairs and out into the shadow of the Abbey and Big Ben across the street. She was at least to walking and standing for hours in heels, so the damage to her feet was not critical level, but even the ten-minute walk to Buckingham was beginning to sound like a stretch. Her security trailed, as ordered, ten or twenty feet behind her, so nobody would connect their presence to hers. Emma had found that it was really quite easy to go incognito, if you meant it. You could pretend you wanted privacy with shoving bodyguards and blacked-out windows, which of course only served the purpose of drawing everyone's attention, or you could dress down and act completely normal, be willing to play by the same rules as the rest of the world, and get by just fine.

The late-afternoon light was green and gold through the trees of the Mall as Emma foraged up the sidewalk like a salmon swimming upstream to the ancestral breeding ground. She walked right past the tourists taking pictures of the guards out front, around the side, and through the staff entrance in the back. A small grin twisted her mouth. She didn't live here anymore, as she and Killian had set up home in one of the apartments of Kensington Palace, but it was still where she had (mostly) grown up, and what with one thing and another, she hadn't been back to the hideous old pile for a bit. It was always nice to come home, no matter who you were. A quick visit to the powder room to fix hair and makeup later, she emerged into the family quarters and strode down the hall. The family was gathering tonight for a private, informal dinner, before all the pomp and circumstance of the weekend.

"Emma!" Her father was the first to glance around at her entrance, rising to his feet with a warm smile. The Duke of Edinburgh had recently celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday, was looking tan and fit from the royal vacation to the Seychelles six weeks ago, and had recovered admirably from the minor scandal of him punching a paparazzo trying to sneak into Victoria's second birthday party. Prince David was rather insanely overprotective of his beloved only granddaughter, to the point where if it was up to _him,_ he would have hired the same kind of firms (possibly all of them) who worked security for Swiss banks, and possibly established a no-fly zone over Kensington just to be safe. It was mostly funny, but sometimes Emma felt the gentle need to remind him that as Victoria had not yet been either kidnapped by terrorists or fallen ill with some rare and deadly disease, the standard measures were probably doing fine at protecting her. Though she had to confess to some nerves herself as the big weekend approached; there were a lot of formal events that would be much easier to get through _without_ a screaming toddler. Hopefully Vicky would be on her best behavior.

"Hi, Dad." Emma kissed his cheek. "I'm not late, am I?"

"No, not at all." David gestured around the room. "Informal" for the royal family meant something rather different than it did for John and Jane Q. Public, as they were certainly not crashing before the telly in sweatpants with a box of takeaway Nando's. There was a chandelier on the ceiling, several priceless paintings on the walls, a selection of gourmet wines waited to be decanted by the white-aproned waitstaff, and china and crystal place settings, but such was life. "Where's Killian?"

"He's going to be along in a bit. He went to Heathrow to meet Liam and Elsa."

At that, there was a huff from behind her. "Please tell me he took a proper car. If I have to see one more picture of him on some awful bus with grotty plumbers and 'hood rats' and people on welfare, I'm disinheriting you both."

Emma turned to see her step-grandmother, wearing a large diamond necklace and a custom Armani creation, as well as an antique Cartier tiara; there was certainly no such thing as a sloppy night in for the Queen Mother. "What?" she said dryly. "I'm surprised to hear we're even in the will in the first place."

Regina arched an eyebrow at her judgmentally, but the two of them exchanged air kisses on each cheek, and Emma then hugged her step-grandfather rather more warmly. Robin looked dashing in his suit, and Henry and Roland, along with their wives and children, were milling around and chatting. "Don't worry," Emma said. "He took a Range Rover. He didn't think it would be proper to make the Crown Princess of Norway catch the Piccadilly line."

Regina raised her eyes to the heavens, as if in thanks that at least someone had some sense around here, but Robin winked at Emma, and she grinned. Killian had been too excited to wait a minute longer than he had to. Liam and Elsa had been married a year after they were, and Liam had moved to Oslo to live with her; it had done him a world of good to get out of London, but the Jones brothers had not seen each other in quite a while after never being apart for more than a few weeks for the rest of their lives, and this visit was the first time that Killian and Emma would get to meet their nephew, eight-month-old Prince Erik. His birth had also attracted media interest, but as was true overall, the Norwegian royal family did not live in nearly the same kind of blinding scrutiny as the Brits, and Liam was very happy there; he was studying in hopes of passing his Norwegian citizenship test and becoming dual with the UK before much longer. Killian and Emma were of course delighted that he was doing so well, but it didn't stop them from missing him here at home.

Emma had just gotten herself a drink when the doors of the dining room opened, and the nanny arrived with her daughter. Vicky looked a bit sleepy, yawning as she glanced around shyly at all the people she didn't know very well, but her grandfather locked in on her like a homing beacon, pulling funny faces to make her laugh and put her at ease. Emma grinned, wending her way back over to them and taking Vicky as she reached out for her mother, settling her on her hip. She and Killian wanted to be hands-on parents as much as possible, but the demands of their respective schedules did not always agree. Emma still often worried that she wasn't doing enough, that Vicky was lonely, as if she was growing up in a beautiful, gilded birdcage by herself with the world very far away below. That was when the urge was strongest to have another baby, as the life of a royal child was intensely isolating and the life of an only royal child even more so. Maybe it was time to at least think about it. Maybe she should bring up the subject with Killian. He of anyone knew the strength and value of loving a sibling.

At that moment, the footmen at the doors abruptly straightened up in the way that meant Her Majesty was incoming, and everyone in the room turned to look as they were opened with a bow to admit Queen Mary Margaret and ten-year-old Prince Nicholas Edward Arthur Louis. (To Emma's relief, he had stopped calling himself N.E.A.L, and these days went by Nick.) The Queen's sister, Princess Ruby, was also with them, and Emma hoped Killian would hurry up; even as bad as the traffic probably was, it would be a _faux pas_ to keep HM waiting too long. Displaying the same populist touch, Liam and Elsa had traveled first class on a commercial British Airways flight from Oslo, and thus would have to go through the same customs process as everyone else. Maybe they could speed it up if they informed the friendly UK Border Patrol man that they were about to be late for dinner with the Queen. It would be worth it just to see the look on his face.

"Congratulations, Mum," Emma said, shifting Vicky to the other hip and making her way to hug her mother. "Twenty-five Christmas Speeches and Openings of Parliament down. That makes you the. . . third-longest reigning queen in English history?"

"There have only been five," Mary Margaret said dryly. "And Mary II was split with William, so technically four and a half. So I suppose it's high time that my next two heirs apparent are both women."

Emma grinned, kissing Vicky's head. "Hopefully not for a while yet." It was a bit sordid that she didn't start the job her entire life was supposed to prepare her for until her mother died, and then Vicky when she did. Though it might not come to that. Mary Margaret was aware of the immense popularity of Emma and Killian as a royal couple and modern-day fairytale, and had said that she would consider abdicating in her daughter's favor in another decade or so. She didn't want it to be too soon, wanted to give them a chance to raise their family and live semi-normally first, but she was also hoping to have a nice retirement at some point. She wasn't the kind of person naturally comfortable in the spotlight, though she had served with dedication and conscientiousness for the past quarter-century and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But there was a growing trend of European monarchs stepping down for their children to take over, and she saw nothing inherently Disloyal To Sacred Duty about the idea.

Emma glanced around again. Still no Killian. She was just about to step outside and phone her tardy husband directly, order him to get out and walk if it was faster, when the doors finally opened again and the Duke of Cornwall and the Crown Princess and Prince(s) of Norway made their long-awaited entrance, looking rather frazzled. Prince Erik was a chubby blonde angel, a striking contrast to his dark-haired cousin Victoria (although both of them had the same huge, innocent, who-me blue eyes) and Emma broke into a wide grin and ran to greet her in-laws. "Elsa! Liam!" She didn't have enough hands to hug them all at once, as Vicky squirted down and made a beeline for Killian; she was an utter and complete daddy's girl. "Let me guess, traffic?"

"I don't think that's an adequate word to describe it," Liam said, pulling her into a delightfully strong and solid embrace. "I was half-expecting a vagrant army with rocket launchers to appear and set up a position among the wreckage to fight zombies. It's good to see you, Emma."

"You too." Emma stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, gripping him by the shoulders as if to double-check that he was real. "So much. Thank you for coming back here."

"Of course." Liam grinned crookedly. "It's an occasion, isn't it? And it's about time I saw how my little brother is doing aside from causing the dedicated public-transit observers of the City of London to have regular conniption fits. Bloody hell, Killian, you _are_ a prince now. I think the Exchequer will survive if you don't make them pay for your Oyster card."

Killian looked stung. "I pay for my own Oyster card, thank you very much. And you're a prince too, but I don't see you cruising around in solid-gold Maseratis either."

"All the progressive, health-conscious, environmentally friendly, sensibly spending, egalitarian-democratic people of Norway would throw me directly in a fjord if I so much thought of solid gold anything," Liam remarked. "Excuse me, Emma, I need to go congratulate your mother."

As he crossed the room toward Mary Margaret, Elsa held out Erik, and Emma accepted him with a coo of admiration. At the same time, she turned her head to kiss her husband as he stepped up next to her. "How'd your meetings go, love?"

"Well, I think," Emma said. "If my eyes ever uncross, I'll let you know. Did you finish that catalogue of eighteenth-century Bristol port records?"

"No," Killian said, looking disappointed. Her not-quite-so-shy-anymore librarian was probably the only man in the world who would find sorting through a giant mess of illegible three-hundred-year-old administrative records in the least interesting, but that was Killian for you. He had discovered some bit of apparently fascinating miscellanea about the shipping interests owned by Woodes Rogers, better known as the man to end the "pirates' republic" of the Bahamas in the early 1720s, building on his research from all the local archives he had visited while Emma was on her Caribbean tour, and was hoping to make a book out of it. He had also taught himself to read Sanskrit in his spare time, his seventh language, because that was just the kind of thing he did. She loved her handsome nerd so much, it hurt a little sometimes.

After a few more rounds of introductions and drinks, the gathering was finally called to order, everyone took their seats at the table, and dinner began. Emma, Killian, Liam, and Elsa were seated together, catching up on all their news and doings, and Liam annoyed Killian by only answering in Norwegian when Killian asked him questions, claiming that he needed to practice (although Old Norse was one of Killian's reading languages, so he might have gotten more out of it than Emma did). Elsa finally smacked him and made him be nice, and Emma and Killian exchanged a small, private smile at the sight. "Thank you," Emma said in an undertone to her friend, while the boys were arguing about something. "You have no idea what this means to us."

"I think I do." Elsa smiled gently back at her. "And you're welcome. It hasn't exactly been a hardship."

The evening eventually progressed to the part where everyone gave speeches about Mary Margaret and thanked her for the example she had been in their lives and for her service to the country, and anticipated it fruitfully continuing for many years. Killian was visibly starting to droop, as it had been a long day and he rarely was in bed later than eleven PM (unless extenuating circumstances or engagements intervened) but he bore it manfully, clearly determined not to be the one to let the Family down. Emma squeezed his hand under the table, as if in promise that she would be sure this did not impinge too vastly upon him. She would, too; she was mama-bear protective over both Killian and Vicky. She at least had grown up in the goldfish bowl and lived her entire life knowing what to expect from it; she could deal with the occasional push too far by the media or the public, as long as it only concerned her. But do anything iffy where her husband and daughter were concerned, and all bets were off.

Finally, as the younger royals were clearly also starting to hit snooze mode, and there was a busy weekend to come, it was time to make their excuses for the night. Elsa and Liam were staying with them at Kensington, so they collected their respective children and headed down to the car. Fortunately, at least some of the apocalyptic gridlock had cleared for the night, so it was a comparatively short trip home, showing their guests to their rooms and finally able to retreat to their own. They put Victoria down, then went into their bedroom and shut the door, undressing and sinking with a groan into their sumptuous feather mattress and pulling the quilts up. Emma rolled over into Killian's arms, and he nuzzled her close, chin resting on her head, as they finally unwound. Then she murmured, "Vicky looked good playing with her cousin. Maybe we should think, you know. About another one."

"Mmm." Killian grinned sleepily. "Have to admit, the same thought has crossed my mind recently. But we'll have to start trying another night, love. I'm completely knackered."

"You're old," Emma teased, leaning up to kiss his chin. "But I suppose I can excuse it, seeing as I am too."

Killian made a deep, rumbling sound of total contentment, rolling half over so she could snuggle her head into its preferred position on his chest. She lay there, listening to the steady thump of his heart beneath her ear, until she finally yawned, shifted again, and murmured, "Good night."

Only a soft snore answered her.


End file.
